The Mesa County Oral History Project recently digitized interviews with Lebrado “Lee” Serna and Anna (Garcia) Gallegos, descendants of the long-standing Hispanic community that still exists today along the Colorado-New Mexico border. Spanish-speaking peoples first came north to Northern New Mexico in the late 1500’s and up into Southern Colorado not long after. There, in […]
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In Grand Junction, Colorado, we have a street named Chipeta Avenue. As a kid, I had no idea what that signified or who Chipeta was, nor was I taught in school. Yet there was a time when Chipeta was famous in Colorado. She played an important role in the history of the Ute people and […]
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The recently removed Ute Indians loomed large in the imagination of Grand Junction’s early settlers. The Utes allowed the U.S. Army to remove them peaceably to the Uintah Reservation in Utah in 1881, and in historical retrospect, it seems there was no real risk that they might threaten the town. Some Utes stayed behind and […]
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Residents of the American West are no strangers to the idea of flash floods, but having one actually crash down on you while you’re camped in a canyon is different altogether. In August of 1941, cowhand Merle Winters was camped in the Utah Bookcliffs in a canyon of Diamond Creek. Winters was working for the […]
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People in the Grand Valley know Chet Enstrom for his delicious almond toffee, still sold by Enstrom Candies. But did you know that he started his career as an ice cream maker? In his interview with the Mesa County Oral History Project, Enstrom describes how he became involved in the ice cream business. When Enstrom […]
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Longtime Mesa County resident Evelyn Kyle turned 100 years old this year, and was honored by the Museums of Western Colorado with the Museum Service Award for her contributions to local history. Now, the Mesa County Oral History Project has recorded a new interview with Evelyn, in which she discusses her life and accomplishments. In […]
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The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad (D&RG) gave Grand Junction its first permanent transportation link to the outside world with the completion, in November 1882, of a railroad bridge over the Colorado River at the confluence. The first train arrived at seven minutes of five o’clock on November 21, 1882, coming over the bridge with […]
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In the old days of rural schoolhouse education in Mesa County and the Western Slope, most kids simply withstood the smacked wrists and hits they received from teachers, and understood it was the price for bad behavior. Farm and ranch kids, the boys especially, were thought to be wild by nature, and they often simply […]
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In her interview for the Mesa County Oral History Project, Lucille Mahannah, longtime superintendent of Mesa County Schools, remembers playing in bountiful grasses that covered the dobies (desert hills) around her home between Fruita and Grand Junction. Anyone looking at the sparse vegetation on our rolling adobe desert might scoff at this claim, but Emma […]
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Sure, all that expensive rock climbing gear you have is great, but the next time you pull out your fancy climbing clothes, think of Jeanette LeBeau climbing Independence Monument in her socks. In her interview with the Mesa County Oral History Project, LeBeau talks about she and other children from Fruita, Colorado free-climbing Independence Monument […]
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