The scramble to prepare for the big winter holiday season started weeks ago.  There have been moments of joy while visiting with relatives and loved ones, or finding that perfect gift for your kiddo.  Then there’s moments of stress when realizing the strings of Christmas lights you’ve spent hours draping over your roof won’t turn […]

Historical photos can tell you a lot about a building or setting. They can show you how structures or places have changed over time in addition to helping identify where something was located if it no longer stands. Historical photos can also give you an idea of how people dressed, the transportation that they used, and […]

  Since long before I was a young whippersnapper, there have been some interesting slang expressions thrown around the Grand Valley region. The Mesa County Oral History Project is full of interviews with original settlers to this area. Indulge in a listen, and you may pick up on some ways of speech that inspire confusion, […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]