Oil shale industry -- Colorado -- History
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Armand de Beque describes the early days of his father, W.A.E. De Beque, as one of the founders of De Beque, Colorado. He also talks about the cattle ranching business, local legends of the valley, oil rigs in the area, and sheep and cattle ranching wars. 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
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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Compound
Adam Reeves describes his education, which includes a degree from the University of Denver and a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Oklahoma. He also mentions his military service in Europe during the 1940s. He arrived in Western Colorado in October 1947 and worked as a federal employee for the Anvil Points Research Facility near Rifle, CO. He explains that the facility was operated by the United States Bureau of Mines after the...
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Compound
Penelope Eberhart talks about her father Harry Brown’s introduction to oil shale while on a family vacation in Denver in the 1920’s, his subsequent move to the De Beque area on the Western Slope, and his early business venture in oil shale with the Index Oil Shale Company. She speaks about the mining and milling process for shale, and about a biproduct of the milling process marketed as plant fertilizer called Index Soil Vitalizer. She talks about...
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Voice Recording
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 Mesa County Minerals.
This...
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Voice Recording
In a general meeting of the Mesa County Historical Society, Armand de Beque describes the history of oil shale development in De Beque and the Piceance Basin, Colorado. He offers three stories for how it was discovered that oil shale can burn. He describes the founding of the Shale Oil Syndicate, an organization founded by his father, Dr. W.A.E. de Beque, William R. Warren, George Newton, and William Dinkel. He explains the lengthy process the Shale...
