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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

Thanks to the Mesa County Oral History Project, patrons can now hear episodes of the dramatic Western radio plays True Epics of Western Colorado through the Mesa County Libraries catalog. After vaudeville’s decline and before television’s rise, radio plays were popular entertainment. Serialized shows like The Shadow and Little Orphan Annie inspired legions of devoted […]

Mesa County residents can now find an oral history interview of U.S. Representative Wayne Aspinall online in the Mesa County Libraries catalog, via the Mesa County Oral History Project. In his time, Wayne Aspinall was one of the most powerful men in the United States. As one of the longest serving members of the U.S. […]