Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Crystal, NM

Crystal is an unincorporated community and census-designated place on the Navajo Nation in northwestern New Mexico, straddling the line between San Juan and McKinley counties.

Its Navajo name is Tóniłtsʼílí, and its English name is thought to come from a Navajo expression meaning "crystal water flows out."

Crystal sits at the base of the Chuska Mountains at the western end of Narbona Pass, the mountain crossing long known as Washington Pass, on New Mexico State Road 134.

Crystal was founded in 1884 when a trading post was established there; the first known trader in the pass area was Romulo Martinez, who traded there in 1873.

Trader John Bradford Moore arrived in 1896, built a log trading post by a clear spring, and employed Navajo women to weave rugs through the winter months.

Moore issued mail-order catalogs of Navajo rugs in 1903 and 1911, among the first of their kind, and his designs established the bordered, Oriental-influenced style known as the Early Crystal rug.

Early Crystal rugs of 1900-1920 often carry whirling log motifs drawn from Navajo ceremonial sandpainting imagery.

Moore left in 1911 and was succeeded by his manager, A. J. Molohon; later owner Don Jenson, who bought the post in 1944, developed the modern Crystal rug, a banded, vegetal-dyed weaving without a border.

Crystal had a population of 302 at the 2020 census, down slightly from 311 in 2010 and 347 in 2000.

In the 2000 census, the CDP counted 100 households and 113 housing units, with an average household size of 3.47.