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 […]

                              Big Foot Mary was well known among ranchers and inhabitants of the Uncompahgre area for having, well, big feet (interestingly, the leader of the last wolf pack in the Bookcliffs and Roan Plateau was reportedly named Old Bigfoot, so maybe […]

Poaching leads to nothing good. The results can be unbearable. Take the trapper who stole two wild bear cubs from their mother on the Grand Mesa and sold the cubs to interested parties. John Duncan Hart, a longtime state and federal game warden in Mesa County, relates that the cubs went to a brothel on […]

Deep in the Dolores River Canyon, there lies a long-inactive wooden structure built off high hopes and steady dreams of gold.  This engineering feat is called the Hanging Flume, and miles of its fragmented remains cling to the canyon wall above the Dolores River, an hour and half drive from Grand Junction, Colorado.   The hanging […]