Frontier and pioneer life -- Colorado
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Marie (Becker) Young talks about her experience living in Germany for a year, and the early days of fruit farming in Mesa County, Colorado. Marie also discusses the early history of Orchard Mesa, her social and work life as a teenager, the business of cattle driving and roundups with her husband in Utah, and her life as a homemaker. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries, the...
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Compound
Eda Musser talks about life in Delta, Colorado after moving there in 1908, when she was thirteen. She discusses landmarks such as the LeVeta Park School, the Anna-Dora Opera House, and the Delta House Hotel. She describes her involvement in the Spoon Club and other aspects of social life. She speaks about her family’s move west from Illinois using an immigrant car. She talks about meeting and marrying rancher Kelso Musser and their move to Cedar...
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Voice Recording
Tom Charles talks about moving to the Fruitvale area of Mesa County, Colorado in 1907, his family’s fruit orchards, and the history of fruit growing in the Grand Valley. Emma (Berg) Nagel describes her family’s homestead in the Highpoint area north of Fruita in 1894. She speaks about living in a dugout for three years, clearing the land for cultivation, and the family’s fruit orchard. Charles and Nagel both discuss the various crops grown around...
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Compound
In a letter read aloud to his niece, Marion Echternach talks about the history of his immigrant family in the United States, including their settlement in Oklahoma in 1880. He speaks about his boyhood in Peckham, Oklahoma. He discusses the “land boom” in Palisade, Colorado at the beginning of the Twentieth century and his family’s role in settling the area. He remembers visiting his brother Bill, an employee at the Liberty Bell Mine near Telluride....
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Compound
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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Compound
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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Compound
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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Compound
William “Mose” Burkitt and Estella (Gavin) Taylor discuss the early history of Fruita, Colorado and Mesa County. 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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Compound
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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Compound
Levi Clark discusses the history and agriculture of Palisade, Colorado. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
*Photograph from the 1909 Palisade High School yearbook.
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Voice Recording
Anna Foster describes the history of her family, her life as a school teacher, and the history of the town of Mesa, Colorado. 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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Compound
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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Voice Recording
Virgil Hickman and his wife discuss their lives growing up around Mesa County. Virgil’s grandfather began as a miner in Palisade and Cameo, Colorado, and his family turned to fruit farming. Hickman describes planting the first fruit orchard on East Orchard Mesa, the labor involved with peach growing, and the development of the area. He touches on the businesses, social scene, and Christmas celebrations in Palisade during the early 1900s. The interview...
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Voice Recording
Edithe Pryor discusses her upbringing on a farm in Palisade, Colorado in the early Twentieth century as the daughter of a Welsh immigrant father, and the agricultural history of Palisade, Clifton and the east end of the Grand Valley. She also talks about irrigating land, her mother’s homemaking and recipes for apple deserts, using an old wood-fired cook stove, and getting drinking water from an irrigation ditch. The interview was conducted by the...
Format:
Voice Recording
Joseph John Egger discusses his family’s history in Mesa County, and Mesa County agriculture in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Format:
Compound
Thomas Campbell of Clifton talks about the roads, towns, farms, ranches and geography of places throughout Mesa County, Colorado. He speaks about the Molina flour mill in the town of Molina and about the history of local agriculture. He talks about the history of Clifton, its settlement, and churches. He describes early agriculture and methods of clearing the land for crops. He remembers aspects of peach, pear and apple growing, including pests and...
