Palisade peach season– it’s finally here! For over 125 years Palisade, Colorado has been utilizing the area to grow peaches that are loved far and wide. The first peach trees were planted in 1882 by a man named John Harlow who described the peaches as “ripening in the sun acquired a brilliant color not found […]

This past weekend, the Grand Junction Regional Airport in Colorado and West Star Aviation hosted a spectacular air show featuring the U.S. Navy Blue Angels.  The crowds looked on in awe as the experienced flyers executed great skill and performed exciting stunts over the Grand Valley region.  I feel accomplished when I parallel park my […]

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 […]

In early Mesa County, first there was the fruit boom, then came uranium. The Grand Valley experienced an explosion of activity like no other in the 1940’s when it became “The Uranium Capitol of the World.” Unbeknownst to me before listening to Wayne Farley’s Mesa County Oral History Project interview, the Manhattan Project was a […]

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 […]

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 […]

For all you Mesa County history fans out there, we have an excellent resource both on our shelves and available as eBooks online that could quench your thirst for more knowledge.  The “Journal of the Western Slope” was started by Colorado Mesa University, originally known as Mesa College. History Professor Paul Reddin was the creator […]

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 […]

  Between 1933 and 1942 if you were an unemployed man, there existed a Depression-era project called the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) that would bring you on board to work.  The CCC was created as part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal.  It existed throughout the United States as a public work relief program […]