Bookcliff Avenue seems an obvious enough name. You would think that it was named, of course, for the Bookcliffs, our rugged desert mountains to the north of town, but this is only indirectly the case. Bookcliff Avenue seems to have been named instead for a railroad that once ran along part of its length on […]
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As a world-wise newspaper man, certainly Daily Sentinel publisher and owner Walter Walker could not have been ignorant of the Ku Klux Klan’s campaign against immigrants, Catholics, African-Americans, alcohol consumption, “impure morals,” Jews, and just about anything else the Klan insisted was tearing at the fabric of white, Protestant America. Yet, according to several Mesa […]
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St. Mary’s Hospital and Community Hospital have both been valuable parts of our community for many years, beginning in 1896 and 1946 respectively. But did you know that Mesa County had a hospital that existed earlier than 1896? The Grand Junction News August 25, 1883 edition mentions that the Mesa County Commissioners were looking for […]
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Walter Bigelow Cross seems to have been a man of mystery to the people of Mesa County, Colorado, a well-off person who kept largely to himself and shared few details about his life. They were well aware that he owned Cross Orchards, one of the largest fruit growing operations in Colorado in the early Twentieth […]
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Did you know that Grand Avenue used to extend east of its current stopping point onto what was then called East Grand Avenue? According to Mesa County Oral History Project interviewee Levi Parminter Morse, before the construction of the I-70 business loop, East Grand continued over the railroad tracks and became D ½ Road at […]
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Carl Howelsen came to Steamboat Springs from Norway in 1913 and spread his love of skiing and ski jumping. The town memorialized his important contribution to local skiing by naming their municipal ski area after him. Howelsen may have pioneered skiing in the Steamboat Springs area, but who actually built the first ski runs there? […]
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Elvin Urquhart was a code breaker who helped the United States Navy break the Japanese Navy General Operational Code, or JN25, during World War II. Captain Joseph Rochefort handpicked Urquhart to be part of Station Hypo, a code breaking unit of the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence based in Pearl Harbor. In an interview with […]
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Adrienne Kaga has been a valued employee of Mesa County Libraries for many years. Our Fruita branch manager is an excellent research librarian. If you want a piece of information found, obscure or not, Adrienne can find it. She also speaks Spanish, German and fluent financial-ese, as her previous career as a principal in a […]
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Let’s be clear: In the 1920’s, The Ku Klux Klan was a social and political power in Western Slope towns just as it was elsewhere in Colorado. White Protestants throughout the state joined because they were drawn by the Klan’s anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, anti-immigrant, anti-corruption message, and by the Klan’s hatred of African Americans. Yet some […]
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Since the settlement of Mesa County, its citizens have formed community groups to bond socially, for charitable causes, or for the ritual of belonging. Some founded local chapters of established organizations. In 1883 and 1884, recent arrivals formed Masonic Lodge Charter Number 55, Grand Army of the Republic Post 35, a local chapter of the […]
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