Grand Junction (Colo.) -- History
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Marie Young talks about discrimination that her German American family faced during World Wars I and II. She also talks about her many tasks as a homemaker on a ranch, about helping with the cattle, and doing other ranch work. 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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Thelma Moore talks about her youth on a fruit farm in Pear Park, life in early Grand Junction, her involvement in 4-H clubs, the Locust Ranch fruit growing operation in Clifton, and the other members of the Kettle family to settle in that area. She discusses her career as a seamstress and work making drapes, county extension work with quilters, craft competitions at the Mesa County Fair, and chautauquas and variety shows. She also goes into her life...
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Bessie Jane Milholland talks about her childhood growing up on a ranch in Molina, Colorado and how her family earned a living selling butter and other dairy goods. She describes trips to Grand Junction in horse and buggy, trading and selling handmade goods, and her education at the rural Molina School. She talks about her eventual move to Grand Junction after marrying her husband, Danford Wheeler, their life there, and the tasks of a homemaker. She...
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Former Grand Junction Mayor Jane Quimby talks about her upbringing in Rifle and Grand Junction, Colorado, and her studies. She reminisces about her husband’s profession, being a mother and homemaker for six children, and teaching flute and piano. She remembers substitute teaching from 1967 to 1971 and how that challenge gave her the courage to seek political office. She speaks about the support that she received from other women in the community...
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Ann Stokes talks about her father-in-law Walter Stokes and his involvement in Nineteenth century labor strife as a union coal miner in Colorado. She describes his establishment of the Stokes Mine after he moved to Mesa County and describes the mine’s operations. She speaks about early phone service in Palisade. She discusses her mom’s job as a nurse in rural areas, which included tasks like housecleaning, cooking, and sewing baby clothes for new...
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Lorene Roice talks about her childhood growing up on a farm in Kansas, childhood chores, music, dances, dating, holiday celebrations, and her involvement in 4-H. She also discusses her life in Grand Junction, Colorado, her husband Joe Roice, and their cofounding of the Roice-Hurst Humane Society, Grand Junction’s first animal shelter. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and...
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Susie Mendicelli talks about the life of her Italian-American family in Grand Junction, Colorado, the Mendicelli Bakery, canning and preserving at home, and making sausage and head cheese. She also discusses other Italian-American people and businesses, the history of Grand Junction and the changes she saw in town, and the history of Pitkin Avenue. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration...
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Nevada Burford discusses the history of her pioneering parents, who came to Grand Junction in 1882 and homesteaded in Kannah Creek. She also talks about the Handy Chapel and Grand Junction’s early African-American community. 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.
*Transcript for Tape 2 of 4 only.
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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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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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Mabel Hart Johnson talks about life in Meeker, Colorado in the early 1900’s, Teddy Roosevelt’s mountain lion hunting trip in the area, and what the life of a woman was like in Meeker. She also discusses her battle with the illness St. Vitus’s Dance, using scrip during the Great Depression, homesteading near the White River, raising a family in Grand Junction, and bowling. Her husband Murl Hazen Johnson talks about working as a truck driver for...
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Anna E. Craig discusses her upbringing in Mesa, Colorado, including her social experiences, her father’s life as one of the few doctors in the area, the Mesa County Fair, her holiday rituals, methods of preserving food, and what it was like to own a hotel in Mesa. She also talks about an instance in the 1890’s when hundreds of sheep were driven over a cliff by cattle ranchers on the Grand Mesa, and other strife between cattle and sheep ranchers....
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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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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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Sarah Monnahan describes the instability of her young life, with her father leaving the family when she was two, being left to live with grandparents, great-grandparents and strangers in several different towns and states during her mother’s three marriages, and a house fire that singed her hair and clothes before destroying all of her belongings. She finally found something like a normal life when she was sent to live with her grandmother and uncle...
