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Kate Elizabeth (Phillips) Wills talks about her childhood living in What Cheer, Iowa, and her family’s move to Colorado in 1909. She talks about her family’s orchard, her education, the activities she took part in as a young person, and how she met her husband. She describes her career as a farm wife and homemaker working on peach orchards and cleaning homes in the Grand Valley, the history of churches in Palisade, and migrant workers that worked...
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Harold Zimmerman describes packing fruit during harvest time in the Clifton area, spraying for codling moths, the end of early apple farming in the valley, the train of wagons used to haul fruit on the Midland Trail at harvest time and about a flash flood that devastated Cross Orchards and destroyed 31 Road. He also talks about his career in bookkeeping for Mesa County Valley School District 51 and other organizations, the run on local banks during...
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Mary Plaisted talks about early days in Mesa County, Colorado, her marriage to Thomas Pierce, a farmer in Loma, and the busy life of a homemaker on the farm. She discusses various locations and institutions around the Western Slope, including the Paradox Valley, the Cowpuncher’s Reunion, and the Little Book Cliff Railway. She speaks about her warm family life as a child in Kansas, and life in Western Colorado after her father’s death. She also...
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Early Mesa County resident Joseph John Egger describes his travels to the Grand Valley area, the Colorado National Monument, the differences he perceived between Utes and Navajos, and information about Chief Ouray and Chipeta. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
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Mary Cox talks about her education at the Bryant School and elsewhere in Grand Junction, about corsets and other aspects of school fashion, the history of the Riverside Neighborhood, attending community dances and Glenwood Springs’ Strawberry Days, and boys swimming in the Colorado River. She also discusses old downtown businesses, going to movies at the Majestic Theater, a brothel that advertised at the Mesa County Fairgrounds during a baseball...
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A lecture given at Regis College by Al Look, a Mesa County historian and amateur paleontologist. Look discusses the geology of Grand Junction, the Grand Mesa, and surrounding area. He also describes the multitude of dinosaur fossils found in this area. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
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Al Look talks about taking groups of teachers on tours of the Colorado National Monument and about the history of Grand Junction’s Avalon Theater. He describes the Biltmore, a gambling hall on Main Street owned by J.W. “Big Kid” Eames, and the murder of Eames by dance hall owner and would-be robber Fern “Bubbles” Sadler. He also discusses Pretty Boy Floyd’s brief stay at the Yellow Jacket in Delta, Colorado and his frequenting of Grand...
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Katherine Fuoco describes her family’s experience as German-Russian immigrants living in Loma, Colorado and elsewhere in the American West in the 1910’s and 20’s, raising sugar beets and homesteading. She also talks briefly about her life with husband James Fuoco, an Italian immigrant and car mechanic who went onto found the Fuoco Motor Company in Grand Junction, Colorado. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project,...
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Harry Sylvester Godby discusses his time spent working for and traveling with the Robinson Brothers Circus before moving to Grand Junction, Colorado. Harry also talks about his itinerant childhood moving from place to place, and the wide variety of jobs he worked throughout his life, including construction, mining, blacksmithing and potato farming, and how he was affected by the Great Depression. He shares his discovery of a large pile of boxes with...
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Early Mesa County resident Asunta Violeta “Susie” Mendicelli remembers her time spent in Atchee, Colorado, Italian American life in Grand Junction, and taking the train and riding bicycles into Grand Junction, Colorado. She also discusses life in Italy, the process of making sausages and capocollo, relationships between immigrants in Mesa County, the usage of midwives during childbirth, and riding the Interurban Line between Grand Junction and...
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Hugh Jones tells stories about poachers that he apprehended as a game warden for the Colorado Department of Wildlife in the mid-Twentieth century. 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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To mark the centennial celebration of the town of Grand Junction, Colorado in 1981, the Mesa County Oral History Project wrote and recorded several radio plays about local history. Beginning on September 26, 1981, local radio stations KSTR, KREX-AM, KREX-FM, and KMSA broadcast the plays. Authors of the plays used interviews recorded by the Mesa County Oral History Project as inspiration. This archival recording contains the play The New Girl in Town,...
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Emmett Elizondo talks about his arrival in the United States from the Basque region of Spain and his first sheepherding job in Buffalo, Wyoming. He remembers building his own herds through a sheep leasing deal with a business partner in Salt Lake City. He recalls his move to Colorado’s Western Slope and eastern Utah, where he amassed a large sheep operation and owned 25,400 acres by 1980. He speaks about his community involvements, including his...
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Lois Long describes the homestead she grew up on near Loma. She remembers living in a tent and then a pre-cut house, and drinking ditch water. She recalls her father and uncle moving the Valley View School to north of the Colorado River in the 1920’s, and the school bus that was sometimes a horse-drawn cart. Leland Buniger talks about his childhood in Grand Junction, Fruita and Loma. He describes farming potatoes, beans and hay. He speaks about...
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John Brach, the son of Italian immigrants, talks about his family moving from Aguilar, Colorado to Loma so that they could work in agriculture instead of the coal mines. He speaks about relying on ditch water for drinking water, using carbide lights, and a coal stove. He remembers people who came to Loma as part of a Federal resettlement program during the Dust Bowl, including the De Kruger, Bittle and Beede families. He recalls other residents and...
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In a two-part interview carried out over two days, Howard Shults talks about his experiences as a rancher and auctioneer on Colorado’s Western Slope. In part one, he talks about the arrival of his parents in Mesa County in 1903, their teaching careers at Pear Park and in Fruita, and his father’s move to a career as an auctioneer. He speaks about his childhood in Grand Junction and Collbran, his graduation from Grand Junction High School in 1923,...
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In a lecture and panel discussion at the Palisade’s Taylor Elementary School, Evelyn Kyle speaks about the history of the Mesa County Oral History Project and its invaluable role in collecting local stories. An interview panel of Evelyn Kyle, Paula Buttolph, Mary Faye Hampton, and Luella Morgan speak about their lives, the lives of women in the area, and Western Slope history. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County...
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Arvid Muhr talks about his family of Swedish Immigrants, about peach farming on East Orchard Mesa in Mesa County, and about the development of irrigation water in the Grand Valley. Mr. Muhr also discusses the Teller Institute baseball team, made up of American Indians that attended the school, and about working on a hydroelectric dam near Palisade. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County...
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Walter Flasche talks about his birth in Nebraska and moving to De Beque, Colorado with his parents via covered wagon around 1908. He remembers life in the Roan Creek area, severe drought and heavy snows. He recalls battles between cattle ranchers and sheep ranchers in the area. He speaks about his work as a logger and his work in the nascent oil shale industry. He describes how hard the life of a rancher and oil shale worker was, and how his wife...