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Showing 1 - 12 of 12 , query time: 0.24s
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Madge Davis talks about her early life in Clifton, Colorado, including childhood games she played, Fourth of July picnics in No Thoroughfare Canyon, and holiday celebrations. She also discusses other aspects of life living on a ranch, including home furnishings, homemade clothes, handcrafts, her father cutting ice from the Colorado River, and schooling. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County...
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Glenn McFall talks about his various jobs around Mesa County and about witnessing the unveiling of Christo’s Valley Curtain installation in Rifle Gap. He also discusses fishing and battling snow storms on the Grand Mesa, the deer population around Mesa County, his experiences during childhood growing up in Clifton, the old Midland Trail automobile route, drinking and making bootleg whiskey, Italian-Americans making bootleg wine, the Book Cliff Railway,...
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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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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...
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Jo (O’Quinn) Ferguson talks about making meals for ranch hands and other aspects of ranching with her husband George Gibson Ferguson in Garfield County. She speaks about churches, clubs, and the social and community life of the area. She describes her education in Louisiana and Colorado and her long teaching career, with an emphasis on her work with Central High School students at the end of her career. She talks about the history of the Roan Creek...
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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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Josephine “Jo” Ferguson describes her life as a teacher in Rifle, Colorado, Las Vegas, Nevada, and at Central High School in Mesa County. She talks about running a dairy and cattle ranches with her husband in Garfield County in the 1920’s and 30’s. She speaks about the boarding school in Louisiana that she attended as a child, and about experiencing the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic in Louisiana. Josephine describes social activities she enjoyed,...
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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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An interview with Howard Shults, a longtime resident of Mesa County who worked as an auctioneer, farmer, and member of the state land commission. He discusses the business of corralling horses, horse trading, racing horses for money, the Cross Ranch, and social events such as rodeos, fairs, and dances. He also talks about hauling coal in a horse-drawn wagon and the history of coal mines in the valley, about the history of the old fairgrounds at Lincoln...
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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...
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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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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...