Chambers Residents Oppose Liquor License for Interstate 40 Convenience Store

Ina Noggle still remembers the ambulances 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. "I think that's where I developed this passion against alcohol."

Those memories are now driving Noggle and other advocates in the Sanders-Chambers area to oppose a convenience-store application for a Series 9 packaged-liquor license at a single store along Interstate 40 in Chambers. The Apache County Board of Supervisors heard hours of public opposition to the application, with residents, Navajo chapter officials and advocates all pushing back against what they see as a threat to communities that spent generations living with the consequences of alcohol access near tribal land.

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 small eastern Apache County community sits at a strategic crossroads, and its convenience store serves as a practical lifeline for Navajo families whose access to basic supplies runs through that Interstate 40 corridor.

The dispute carries weight well beyond a single liquor license application. It touches a long history of alcohol policy on and around the Navajo Nation, where law, sovereignty, economics and trauma have intersected for generations.

Watching her grandmother grieve the loss of her uncle, and absorbing the broader damage alcohol caused across the community, shaped Noggle's lifelong opposition. That personal history is now inseparable from the public fight over what gets sold at a convenience store off the interstate.

The application's status before Apache County has not been publicly confirmed, and the identity of the applicant has not been released. No vote by the Board of Supervisors has been reported.