Frontier and pioneer life -- Colorado
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Cassie Seals, an African-American resident of Grand Junction who came to the area around 1924, discusses her experiences in Mesa County, her membership in the Handy Chapel congregation, and her family and culture growing up in Thornton, Arkansas. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
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Darwin Burford discusses growing up in Whitewater, Colorado in the early Twentieth century, and going to school in Mesa County, Colorado. Darwin talks about the early narrow gauge railroad that serviced Mesa County, about the Barnum and Bailey Circus, daily childhood chores, playing cribbage as a family, and his argument with John Otto. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries,...
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Emma Conner talks about the lives of her parents and grandparents, Mesa County pioneers. She speaks about her early schooling at the Franklin School and work in her grandmother’s boardinghouse. She details restrictions that were put into place during the Spanish Flu epidemic of 1918. She discusses the railroad occupations of her father and husbands, and a rail accident that killed her second husband. She talks about downtown Grand Junction’s dirt...
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Nevada Burford discusses the history of her pioneering parents, who came to Grand Junction in 1882 and homesteaded in Kannah Creek. She also talks about the Handy Chapel and Grand Junction’s early African-American community. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries, the Museums of Western Colorado and the Mesa County Historical Society.
*Transcript for Tape 2 of 4 only.
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Mary Corcoran talks about her parents and grandparents, pioneers in Mesa County and Eastern Utah. She also talks about her early life in Grand Junction, Colorado, and about ranch life above De Beque on the Grand Mesa. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries, the Museums of Western Colorado and the Mesa County Historical Society.
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Mabel Hart Johnson talks about life in Meeker, Colorado in the early 1900’s, Teddy Roosevelt’s mountain lion hunting trip in the area, and what the life of a woman was like in Meeker. She also discusses her battle with the illness St. Vitus’s Dance, using scrip during the Great Depression, homesteading near the White River, raising a family in Grand Junction, and bowling. Her husband Murl Hazen Johnson talks about working as a truck driver for...
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Anna E. Craig discusses her upbringing in Mesa, Colorado, including her social experiences, her father’s life as one of the few doctors in the area, the Mesa County Fair, her holiday rituals, methods of preserving food, and what it was like to own a hotel in Mesa. She also talks about an instance in the 1890’s when hundreds of sheep were driven over a cliff by cattle ranchers on the Grand Mesa, and other strife between cattle and sheep ranchers....
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Rose and Morgan Goss discuss the early settlement of Grand Junction and Fruita, Colorado, and agricultural life in the Appleton area. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
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Cordelia Files talks about the history of her family as early homesteaders in Mesa County, Colorado. She remembers life in Fruita in the early Twentieth century. She recalls working on a ranch near De Beque for her first job at the age of fifteen. She speaks about her life as a teacher instructing all eight grades in a one-room school house, about different episodes from her career in education (including the time a cat came to school), and about...
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In this recording, Alta Nolan reads the memoirs of Cordelia Files. Files talks about the history of her parents and maternal grandparents who homesteaded in the Fruita, Colorado area in the 1890’s. She describes the fruit growing operation on the homestead. She recounts seeing the Ute people and Chipeta when they came in the fall to dry fruit from the orchard. She remembers early Fruita, with its dirt streets and plank sidewalks. She speaks about...
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Ann Stokes talks about homesteading on East Orchard Mesa after her family moved to Mesa County, Colorado in 1904. She remembers her father working on the “fancy” masonry for the Grand Junction train station. She recalls living in a one-room log cabin and sharing that cabin with a horse for an evening. She speaks about the development of irrigation on East Orchard Mesa and her father’s peach orchard. She describes walking with her siblings four...
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During a panel discussion of the Mesa County Historical Society, Kenneth Baird discusses the settlement and incorporation of Grand Junction, the creation of the Grand Junction Town Company, early city government, town building, and early municipal ordinances. Professor Don Mackendrick talks about James W. Bucklin’s draft of a new city charter in 1910, which established a commission form of government. He mentions progressive reforms that put the...
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Oscar Jaynes discusses childhood memories of Clifton, Colorado, including life on his family’s homestead, a time he climbed inside a giant tire and rolled down a desert hill, and a boxing match at school with future Colorado Supreme Court justice Jim Groves. He then relates tales of traveling the country on freight cars trying to find work during the Great Depression. Oscar also talks a great deal about the fruit business, specifically the peach...
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Early Fruitvale resident Velma E. Budin discusses the history of Fruitvale and Fruitvale High School, the extensive pioneering history of the Borschell family in the Grand Valley, the biographies of several prominent Fruitvale families, fruit farming, and early irrigation methods of the Grand Valley. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
*Photograph...
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Bessie Jane Milholland talks about her childhood growing up on a ranch in Molina, Colorado and how her family earned a living selling butter and other dairy goods. She describes trips to Grand Junction in horse and buggy, trading and selling handmade goods, and her education at the rural Molina School. She talks about her eventual move to Grand Junction after marrying her husband, Danford Wheeler, their life there, and the tasks of a homemaker. She...
