The Short Mountain Trading Post is a fictional landmark landmark located in the extremely barren area of Short Mountain Territory, also fictional, east of Tuba City near Black Mesa. The trading post has few customers and has been advertised as for sale for more than 40 years.
A trading post is an establishment where goods can be traded. It is also a social center where news and gossip are exchanged. Trading posts have been associated with American frontier culture since the seventeenth century. Overtime, trading posts developed into a cultural institution, at first funded and backed by empire, later by national interests, and most often by enterprising business men. Trading posts became centralized hubs in a network of exchange that both participated in and circumvented the burgeoning capitalist system that was imported into the Americas along with settler colonialism. Although trading posts were initially intended to provide support to the European traders and trappers who traced their way over the North American continent, Native American groups were also drawn into the posts' exchange network, trading furs, pelts, and even scalps for finished goods such as steel knives, firearms, woven textiles, and food stuffs including alcohol. Although not every post was poorly managed, trading posts earned a nefarious reputation for taking advantage of Native traders by offering poor exchange rates, trading with products that were infected with diseases, and promoting the purchase and use of alcohol. Many trading posts are still in existence and are also preserved as National Historic Sites.
