Mesa County Libraries
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Voice Recording
Helen Johnson talks about gardening, methods of preserving food, and other aspects of rural life in Hotchkiss, Colorado in the early Twentieth century. She talks about her mother, Emily (Scatliff) Young, and the jobs she took to support the family after the loss of their life savings due to her father’s bad investment. She discusses the family’s religious observances and the history of churches in Hotchkiss. She talks about her abusive father-in-law...
Format:
Voice Recording
Jean and Benerita Dolores (Velazquez) Urruty discuss Jean’s immigrant experience, the life of a Basque sheepherder, Basque culture, and sheepherding in Mesa County. 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.
Format:
Voice Recording
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...
Format:
Voice Recording
In a recording made for his son, Don Rogers talks about his family’s cattle ranch on Pinon Mesa in the 1910’s, about getting lost in the wilderness at the age of six, about an expert tracker named Avery Burford who led the search party, and about being found the next morning after he spent the night alone on a sandbar of East Creek. He recalls a gunfight between cowboys Louis Stewart and Blue, a shooting by a man named Pete Lapham, and tensions...
Format:
Compound
Dick Lloyd talks about cattle ranching in Western Colorado both before and after the Taylor Grazing Act, about moving cattle around to different grazing areas in Colorado, and about shipping them to Denver by rail via the De Beque Stockyard. He speaks about training horses and using horses to herd cattle. Bertha Lloyd discusses her courtship with Dick, their chivaree and their marriage. The two of them describe homesteading in a log cabin on the Grand...
Format:
Compound
Glenn McFall discusses downtown businesses and business owners in Grand Junction, Colorado, as well as the shoe store he worked at for nine years, McConnell-Lowes. Glenn also talks about the involvement of the Ku Klux Klan in the Grand Valley area, the Mesa County Pest House and Smallpox outbreaks, the social scene and where people went to go dancing, the Mesa County Fair, horse racing and gambling, bailing rowdy cowboys out of the local jail, Eddie...
Format:
Compound
William May talks about his upbringing on a ranch in Steamboat Springs and his life as a rancher, hunting guide, and outfitter. He plays guitar and sings songs that his father and others handed down to him, and songs that he made up. He tells stories from his life, and stories that his father and others related to him. Songs that he sings during the interview include: Mickey Mouse, Little Duck, Cuatro, Little Joe the Wrangler, Home on the Range, Oh...
Format:
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...
Format:
Compound
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...
Format:
Voice Recording
Professor Dan Roberts of Colorado Mesa University discusses the history and culture of the Ute Indians, Chief Ouray, and the removal of the Ute from Colorado by the U.S. Government during a lecture to a meeting of the Mesa County Historical Society. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries, the Museums of Western Colorado and the Mesa County Historical Society....
Format:
Voice Recording
Laird Smith talks about his grandfather Frank Smith’s severe case of Tuberculosis that caused the doctor to move with his family to Grand Junction, Colorado. He describes the apartment next to a saloon where the family lived on Main Street, where drunken men would sometimes crawl in through the windows by mistake. He discusses his father Silmon Smith’s “spartan” upbringing, his camping alone on the Grand Mesa for long stretches when he was...
Format:
Compound
Dorothy Tindall talks about the early days of Whitewater, Colorado as a rail center for cattle and stock. She speaks about the administrative organization of schools prior to the consolidation of Mesa County School District 51, her development of Mesa County’s first school hot lunch program at the Star School, games kids played at recess, about her work educating the children of migrant laborers who lived in La Colonia, and her role in the development...
Format:
Voice Recording
Antonio Clark talks about growing up in Denver, Colorado, and the important role of youth sports in his upbringing. He speaks about his career in high school sports and about being a walk-on as a football player at Colorado Mesa University in Grand Junction. He discusses racism that he experienced as an African-American on the CMU campus, but also his view that diversity on the campus has increased, and that some attitudes about race have changed.
He...
Format:
Voice Recording
David Combs talks about the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis Police, the ethnic makeup of Minneapolis (where Mr. Combs grew up), and the history of policing and police brutality there. He discusses the worldwide movement for social justice that grew from protests against Floyd’s killing, the response to Floyd’s killing in Grand Junction, Colorado, and the protest movement that took shape here. He addresses differences within the local African-American...
Format:
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...
