The increase of convenient transportation methods has always been a fascinating part of history.  Roads were trampled out, built, and eventually paved.  The seemingly charming horse and buggy morphed into horsepower engines.  Living in a land where the prominent, fast-flowing Colorado River (called the Grand River until 1921) cut through the land for miles, many […]

Are you interested in knowing when your home was built, who lived there before and other information? Whether you own or rent your house, you can use these resources to research your house’s history (or your apartment or business’s history, for that matter).   Mesa County Assessor records You can use real property records held […]

If you’ve spent time browsing through the Mesa County Oral History Project interviews, you’ll notice two common occupations worked by women settlers: nurses and teachers.  As we’ve seen through the tireless, incredible efforts of our healthcare professionals and teachers during this past year, positions like this are crucial for the well-being of a community.  One […]

Reading through hundreds of oral history transcripts, I’ve found out some interesting things about my hometown of Grand Junction, Colorado. There were teacher-sanctioned boxing matches at the old Clifton School, a bear cub that lived in a South Street brothel, and of course (I mean, who couldn’t see this happening?), the time they allowed a […]

If you’ve ever stood in Grand Junction and looked east towards the Grand Mesa, you may have noticed some prominent bird-shaped white markings staining the mountainside. standing out amidst the dark volcanic rock.  In Ute tribal legend, these unique features represent the Thunderbird, an entity well-known throughout Native cultures.  Mesa County has its own special […]

                                  The Colorado River has been dammed and diverted so many times, by so many entities and people, that it may never truly flood again in the Grand Valley (at least not within humanity’s tenure… although you can never […]

  There’s some art that’s not meant to last forever.  If you see it before it’s gone, it leaves a deep-rooted impression on your memory. Recent European transplants to New York, Bulgarian artist Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude set their sights on Rifle, Colorado as the next place to create a famous art installation, centered […]

On June 27, 1943, a freight train traveling west toward Grand Junction, Colorado developed a hot box (an overheated axle) when passing through a rail tunnel in De Beque Canyon. The train stopped in Palisade, where workers repacked the axle. A hot box was always dangerous, but in this case it was especially so, because […]

  Historic Grand Junction was full of different types of clubs and organizations working to make the area a better place to live.  Ethel M. (Bear) Hotchkiss was a member of the Grand Junction Women’s Club in the mid 1900s, and she reflects on the club and its role in the community during her 1979 […]