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Turquoise Tepee celebrates over 40 years of trade
Tradition of Native trade continues at local store

Visitors to Williams head toward the Turqoise Tepee, one of Williams’ oldest businesses owned by the same family generation after generation.

Visitors to Williams head toward the Turqoise Tepee, one of Williams’ oldest businesses owned by the same family generation after generation.

One of Williams's oldest businesses, the Turquoise Tepee, has carried a tradition of trade through its many years of operation. The same family has run the shop, which offers a wide variety of merchandise from Native American tribes, ranging from many different locations within the United States, for four generations. Owner Sandy Jensen said the business originally started out on the road. Turquoise Tepee is located between First and Second Street along Route 66.

"My parents (Buck and Dorothy Wheeler) started this store and they actually started being involved with Native Peoples years and years before they became monetarily involved," said Jensen. "They went on the road, they bought things and went on the road and sold them - being self supporting through those years. My dad was a preacher and he worked at many different jobs. He actually had been a musician, very well known during that time period, and he had received the calling from the Lord and decided that he couldn't play both ends of the thing and had to give up his love of music. He loved the people more."

Jensen said she herself grew up in and around Native People for most of her life.

"I grew up doing things like going to powwows, going out to the Indians homes in Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, everywhere, so we have a long history."

Jensen said her parents' first retail operation opened in Williams on the corner of Second Street and Route 66, then known as Bill Williams Avenue, in the location now known as the Grand Canyon Hotel.

"On the main floor part, a friend of theirs had an antique store in there and they had that old ring case and that's when they started in retail," Jensen said. The business, known as Wheeler's Turquoise Tepee, moved to its current location in the Bowden Building along Route 66 in the early 1970s. The owner of the building, Tom Bowden Jr., married Jensen's daughter Leah years later. All of Jensen's children, she said, have worked and participated in the family-run store. The Bowden building, built from stone quarried in Ash Fork, turned 60 years old this year.

"Four generations of our family have worked behind these counters," Jensen said. "My folks, myself, my children and my children's children. It has gone for a long time."

Turquoise Tepee sells a variety of Native crafts, including sterling silver jewelry, 14k gold, sculptures, Kachinas, souvenirs, Navajo rugs and many other unique Native American items.

"We now sell the Dale Anderson metal sculptures. He is not Native," she said. "We have painted feathers, which is an extremely unique art. We have leather dresses; the dresses range from the Sioux, Blackfoot and I have a Navajo dress that was done in leather, but it isn't traditional to the Navajo people to do it in leather."

Jensen said she still works closely with many Native People to this day.

"We are traditional traders in that our old time families come in," Jensen said. "We typically visit, eat and then the mother, she's the boss, will tell the kids to go out and get this, that or the other thing. It's pretty much a hierarchy and the women are very much in charge. Everything in here is pretty much from one tribe or another."

The Fellows

One of the most unforgettable images most visitors to Williams take home with them, especially those who visit the retail establishments along Route 66, is of four Native American men playing a game of cards within the walls of the Turquoise Tepee. Artist Tom Domniani, Jensen said, made the memorable, large figures. Domniani, she added, once worked for Universal Studios and sold the statues commercially from the Turquoise Tepee at one time. When health reasons prevented Domniani from producing further statues, Jensen said the family decided to keep the last four he produced. The statues, as well as the cards they're holding, are over 30 years old. Only one statue has a name, Red Cloud, who was modeled after the infamous Sioux Chief.

"He's the important one," Jensen said.


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