Early Mesa County settler Peter Matteroli was the dentist who outlasted them all. Peter felt anything but a warm welcome when he first decided to start his business in Grand Junction in the early 1900’s.  He rented a room on the 3rd floor in the Grand Valley National Bank Building (now the Dalby Wendland and Co. […]

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 […]

“The mission of Handy Chapel has been and continues to be a beacon of helping with the spiritual, social and economic needs of all our fellow man.” – Josephine Dickey Nestled on the corner of 2nd Street and Grand Avenue in Grand Junction, Colorado lies the Handy Chapel, an important structural piece of Mesa County’s […]

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 […]

Dudley Mitchell was an early Mesa County resident and an interviewee of the Mesa County Oral History Project.  In multiple interviews with Dudley, he discusses his fifty-year employment working an assortment of jobs for the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad (D&RG). If you ever needed any information on how the railroad worked in the early […]

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 […]

Imagine what you were like a decade ago – Where you lived, the people you surrounded yourself with, the activities you chose to partake in, your (maybe regrettable) hairstyle. Similar to how you have undergone a mighty transition or two, Mesa County Libraries has had quite the decade of change and growth. One of the […]

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 […]

  Armand de Beque, an early Mesa County resident and interviewee of the Mesa County Oral History Project, had his fair share of dirt on his father, Dr. Wallace A.E. de Beque.  Dr. de Beque was one of the founders of De Beque, Colorado, a small town in Mesa County.  As described in an interview […]