Chambers liquor fight reopens old wounds
WINDOW ROCK
Ina Noggle remembers the ambulances.
She recalls them racing along the road between Sanders and Chambers, responding to fights, crashes and people found unconscious outside bars that once operated near the Navajo Nation’s southern border.
She also remembers a Thanksgiving Eve from her childhood, when her uncle left one of those bars and was killed by a train.
“That was very devastating for me,” Noggle said.
Watching her grandmother grieve, along with the damage alcohol caused in the community, shaped her lifelong opposition.
“I think that’s where I developed this passion against alcohol,” Noggle said.
Now Noggle and other advocates in the Sanders-Chambers area are opposing a liquor license application that would allow packaged alcohol sales at a convenience store in Chambers. Opponents say the proposal could revive a cycle of addiction, violence and death that once affected the area and nearby Navajo communities that rely on Chambers for fuel and groceries.
The dispute centers on a single store along Interstate 40 in Apache County, but for many residents it carries deeper weight. It touches a long history of alcohol policy on and around the Navajo Nation, where law, sovereignty, economics and trauma have intersected for generations.
To read the full article, please see the March 19, 2026, edition of the Navajo Times.
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Highway 264,
I-40, WB @ Winslow