Feeling nostalgic? Did you or someone you love grow up and attend school in the earlier days of Mesa County? If you’re undergoing a genealogy research project, feel like checking out photos of the awesome hairstyle you were rockin’ forty years ago, or want to bust out your mom’s freshman year picture to embarrass her […]
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Local History Thursday: Butting Heads with John Otto
If you’ve lived in Mesa County for a few years or have strolled around the Colorado National Monument more than once, you are most likely familiar with the legendary John Otto. John Otto was the custodian, founder, and undoubtedly the biggest cheerleader for our beautiful Colorado National Monument, a place of canyons and grandeur that […]
Continue readingLocal History Thursday: When Colorado Avenue was Grand Junction’s Barbary Coast
No one is going to confuse Colorado Avenue with San Francisco in its heyday of vice (the true Barbary Coast). But until the 1940’s, the street served as Grand Junction’s epicenter for adult entertainments, and thus took on the Barbary Coast moniker. The Grand Junction News presented early accounts of murder and mayhem on Colorado […]
Continue readingLocal History Thursday: We Can, and We Did
If you’re at all drawn to Martha Stewart, Pinterest, and food preservation, you may get excited about canning fruits and vegetables. This process has been used for generations to sustain foods in airtight storage to last through tumultuous winters, or simply to snack on during any season. With the abundance of early 1900s fruit and […]
Continue readingLocal History Thursday: Old Healing Techniques
If you’ve seen the classic movie Dumb and Dumber, you may recall a scene in which a policeman calls whiskey “Grandpa’s old cough syrup.” This famous phrase may have stemmed from parts of the country like Mesa County! Back in the early days of the Western Slope, there were many remedies for illness or […]
Continue readingHistorian to discuss the Moyer family in early Grand Junction Sept. 30 at Central Library
Local historian Dave Fishell will discuss the Moyer family’s important role in early Grand Junction at 6:30 p.m. Monday, Sept. 30, 2019, at the Mesa County Libraries Central Library, 443 N. 6th St. in Grand Junction. The Moyers were Grand Junction pioneers who founded The Fair Store, which became one of the largest retail businesses […]
Continue readingLocal History Thursday: Three Incarnations of The Mesa County Fairgrounds
Did you know that the Mesa County Fairgrounds at Veteran’s Memorial Park were once known as Uranium Downs? People who attended horse races, motocross, WWF style “wrestling,” and other events back in the day might remember this nod to Mesa County’s mining (and radioactive) legacy. The Mesa County Fairgrounds opened in their current location in […]
Continue readingLocal History Thursday: The Surrender Tree
One of the most desirable spots for recreation in all of Mesa County is unarguably the Grand Mesa. At an area of about 500 square miles, the Grand Mesa is the world’s largest flat-top mountain. Tens of thousands of years ago, this geologically unique feature was born from a burst of extreme volcanic activity, causing […]
Continue readingLocal History Thursday: Kip Wood the Cowboy Poet
Back in the wild, smartphone-less days of the west, sometimes all a man had to do with his time was to kick back, reflect, and write a bit of poetry. Kip Wood was one such man. Kip was an early Colorado pioneer and cowboy who spent a winter with Butch Cassidy and befriended local […]
Continue readingLocal History Thursday: Glenn McFall and Kindness from Unlikely Places
When Glenn McFall was a teenager riding the rails and looking for work to support his mother and siblings, he landed flat broke in Salida. He had sent all the money he had earned back to his mother, not thinking to save anything for food. He and a friend went door-to-door, asking for something to […]
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