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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Before Grand Junction took its water from the Grand Mesa’s watershed, citizens took water directly from the Gunnison River, and with it Diphtheria, Typhoid Fever, and other interesting diseases that were not remedied until the twin advances of proper water management and vaccinations came into being. A May 1883 issue of the Grand Junction News […]
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In the days prior to adequate floodplain and stormwater management in Mesa County, flash floods could be an issue for valley residents. Charles Buttolph, former manager for the Red Cross Land and Fruit Company (and then-owner of his own fruit farm on adjacent land), talks about one such flash flood that swept through Cross Orchards […]
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In the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth centuries, adventurous Mesa County citizens might mosey on out for a vaudeville act, a lecture, a play, a sermon, country dancing, live music, a circus, horse racing, a baseball game, a boxing match, a carnival, the Mesa County Fair, a medicine show, or even a Chautauqua performance. Destinations […]
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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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