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There are many unincorporated areas in Mesa County, echoes of old place names that exist for most people as amorphous blobs upon the map without clear boundary delineation. I can tell people I grew up in Clifton, but what does that really mean, aside from a designated census area, a mailing zip code of 81520, […]
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When Glenn McFall was a teenager riding the rails and looking for work to support his mother and siblings, he landed flat broke in Salida. He had sent all the money he had earned back to his mother, not thinking to save anything for food. He and a friend went door-to-door, asking for something to […]
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Jess Urban Sickenberger was an early Twentieth century Mesa County doctor, and, according to more than one interviewee with the Mesa County Oral History Project, one of the area’s top surgeons. Apparently, he was also so devoted to his profession that he would let nothing get in the way of helping a patient. Rural doctors […]
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It may seem unlikely to the Grand Valley’s newer and/or younger residents, but for many years, North Avenue was a big commercial and social destination that went beyond fast food restaurants and discount stores. In the original platting of Grand Junction in 1881-2, North Avenue served as the northern boundary to town, and a quick […]
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Stuck between modern amenities and primitive facilities, Judge Logan of Grand Junction chose a middle and ultimately shocking course in order to gain some sort of comfort while using the bathroom. The judge owned what Mesa County Oral History Project interviewee Glenn McFall called “a real nice home” near the brickyard (so presumably in the […]
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Do you have a burning local history topic that you’d like to investigate, or a family history mystery that you want to solve? Mesa County Libraries and other libraries have some great resources for the beginning researcher. Patrons often come in looking for an article about a family member or ancestor. If you have a […]
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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 […]
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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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