Lightning strikes Tanner’s Trading Post in Gallup storm

Lightning struck Tanner’s Trading Post in Gallup on July 22, pulling one of the city’s familiar trading names into the middle of a monsoon storm. The business sits at 1980 Hwy 602, and customers looking for updates can reach Ellis Tanner Trading Co. at (505) 863-4434.

The Tanner name has been part of Gallup’s commercial landscape for decades. Ellis Tanner Trading Company says Ellis Tanner started the business in March 1967 at a small store south of its present location in Gallup, and describes it as a modern-day trading store run by a long-time Indian Trader. That family connection also reaches into other Gallup arts businesses: New Mexico Magazine identified Emerald Tanner as the fifth-generation owner of Tanner’s Indian Arts, while Northern Arizona University Library Special Collections identifies Joe Tanner as Joseph Elwood Tanner, born Aug. 14, 1938, in Farmington, and a great-grandson of Seth Tanner.

The strike landed during a weather pattern that New Mexico knows well. KRQE says monsoon season started June 15 and runs through Sept. 30, while KOB has noted that storms can unload two or three inches on one street while leaving another dry and can turn arroyos and roads into flood zones within minutes. The National Weather Service has warned that monsoon storms can build fast and bring dangerous lightning, the same conditions that can complicate travel across Gallup and McKinley County.

For a local business tied to foot traffic, highway travel and visitors passing through town, a lightning strike is more than a dramatic headline. It can mean time spent checking for electrical damage, fire risk or other storm impacts before doors can open normally again. In Gallup, where the weather can change block by block, the strike at Tanner’s Trading Post showed how quickly a familiar storefront can be pulled into the day’s emergency landscape.