Walter Runke (1879-1964) served as superintendent of the Western Navajo Indian Agency from 1901-1920, and between 1901 and 1902, taught at the Western Navajo Boarding School, sometimes known as the Western Navajo Training School or the Blue Canyon School. The School was established at an abandoned trading post at Algert in Arizona's Blue Canyon, today a ghost town. It had an initial enrollment of 14 Navajo children.
When the U.S. government didn't come forward with funds to improve the site, Runke, employees and Navajo stonemasons went to work themselves, hauling stone and constructing new buildings.
“Oil-can cases were used for window frames and goods boxes were utilized for lumber to make doors, etc.,” Runcke wrote in his 1901 report to the Commissioner for Indian Affairs in Washington.
These photos speak to the rustic conditions of the early school, which closed after a new agency school was constructed in Tuba City, 40 kilometers away.
