For all you Mesa County history fans out there, we have an excellent resource both on our shelves and available as eBooks online that could quench your thirst for more knowledge.  The “Journal of the Western Slope” was started by Colorado Mesa University, originally known as Mesa College. History Professor Paul Reddin was the creator […]

  Between 1933 and 1942 if you were an unemployed man, there existed a Depression-era project called the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) that would bring you on board to work.  The CCC was created as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.  It existed throughout the United States as a public work relief program […]

  Back in early 1900s Grand Junction, the scene on Main Street was exactly what you may expect for a town in the Wild West.  Gambling, prostitution, and bootlegging weren’t uncommon, and a popular fellow named J.W. “Big Kid” Eames decided to join in on the action.  J. Walter Eames moved to Grand Junction from […]

One evening while eating at a steakhouse with my grandfather, I noticed him gasp at the price of sirloin and mutter, “Why, in my day, you could buy a whole cow for $5.” I used to just think he was just being dramatic, but his comical and curmudgeonly attitude wasn’t farfetched: prices have raised significantly […]

“When my father reached this country, this little valley, to him it was the ideal place, the land of his dreams and he always said, and I quote: ‘This valley is a little bit of Heaven on Earth.” – Lucille Mahannah In 1895, Lucille (Hunter) Mahannah was born in the southeast corner of an adobe […]

Early Mesa County settler Peter Matteroli was the dentist who outlasted them all. Peter felt anything but a warm welcome when he first decided to start his business in Grand Junction in the early 1900’s.  He rented a room on the 3rd floor in the Grand Valley National Bank Building (now the Dalby Wendland and Co. […]

“The mission of Handy Chapel has been and continues to be a beacon of helping with the spiritual, social and economic needs of all our fellow man.” – Josephine Dickey Nestled on the corner of 2nd Street and Grand Avenue in Grand Junction, Colorado lies the Handy Chapel, an important structural piece of Mesa County’s […]

Dudley Mitchell was an early Mesa County resident and an interviewee of the Mesa County Oral History Project.  In multiple interviews with Dudley, he discusses his fifty-year employment working an assortment of jobs for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad (D&RG). If you ever needed any information on how the railroad worked in the early […]