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Showing 1 - 11 of 11 , query time: 0.11s
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Anna Underwood talks about her childhood in rural Las Animas County, Colorado, including her participation in a literary society to which she belonged. She also talks about ranching sheep with her husband between New Castle and Glenwood Springs. 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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Anna McGinley talks about teaching at the Hunter School in early day Mesa County. She and her sister Mae Plunkett also talk about their school days and about the lives of their parents John and Theresa McGinley, who were immigrants and Mesa County pioneers. 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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Julia Harris discusses her family’s pioneer history and its move westward, including the journey of her grandfather, who was a member of the 1st Colorado Cavalry Regiment before homesteading in Western Colorado. She talks about early life in De Beque, Colorado, including social life and various places they lived, the railroad, sheep trails, De Beque businesses and landmarks, and her work in the local Republican Party. The interview was conducted...
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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...
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Dr. Andrew Gulliford, head of The Country School Legacy Project (a survey of rural schools over eight states, funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities) presents information from the project in a lecture at the Museum of Western Colorado. The lecture includes reflections from rural school teachers in Colorado, including teaching techniques, discipline problems, infectious diseases, and issues with poorly constructed buildings. Teachers also...
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In an interview from May 14, 1981 (audio only, no transcript), Basil T. Knight talks about his youth in Michigan, meeting his wife’s family in Palisade, Colorado and ultimately moving there, operating a fruit farm, and becoming a lifelong teacher and school administrator. He explains the mechanisms that originally funded the many smaller school districts on the Western Slope, including taxes on railroads, and the reasons for the consolidation that...
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William Raber talks about his family’s ranch in the Kannah Creek area of Mesa County, Colorado, and about the development of reservoirs and water projects, beginning with the city of Grand Junction’s diversion of water from Kannah Creek around 1910. He also talks about traveling by train with cattle that he intended to sell in Los Angeles, and about discrimination that he experienced during World War I as the son of German immigrant. The interview...
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Sara Kruh talks about growing up near Collbran and in Grand Junction, Colorado, and about her schooling. She also discusses teaching in the Molina School on the Grand Mesa and her teaching career, her role in the origins of the Mesa County Teachers Federal Credit Union, and high button shoes. 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...
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Bertha Schlegel discusses growing up in Loma, Colorado and helping her family raise beets for Holly Sugar, and making sauerkraut, pickled apples, pickled watermelon and other ethnic food with her mother, who was a German immigrant from Russia. She also remembers her education and school activities throughout her childhood, including field days at the Fruita Central School and Grand Junction High School. She talks about obtaining a teaching degree,...
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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...