People
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1) David Sundal
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He grew up in Grand Junction, Colorado, where he attended Grand Junction High School and was a longtime town resident. He was a member and president of the Mesa County Historical Society, a presenter on Mesa County homes, buildings and architecture, and an interviewer for the Mesa County Oral History Project. He was a chemist by trade, but knew much about Mesa County's history and its people.
*Photograph from the 1947 Grand Junction High School...
2) Anna Scott
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A reverend and minister in Grand Junction’s Center for Spiritual Living. Prior to that time, she worked as a Prayer Practitioner. She attended Western State College (now Western Colorado University), where she met Wendy Robinson, the mother of Mesa County Oral History Project interviewee Shannon Robinson. She helped care for Shannon after she was pulled from elementary school due to racism and bullying.
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According to multiple interviewees for the Mesa County Oral History Project, he was the chief of fire for the Grand Junction Fire Department, and lost his arm trying to fight the Grand Junction train depot munitions fire in 1943, when a Denver and Rio Grande train carrying US Army munitions caught fire and shot off several bombs.
According to Frank Kreps, who succeeded Downing as the fire chief, Downing retired from the position of fire chief,...
4) Becky Walker
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Preston Walker’s wife. She worked as a secretary for The Daily Sentinel, where, according to interviewees of the Mesa County Oral History Project, she was disliked by her father-in-law Walter Walker and by others on staff because she tried to take over key elements of the newspaper even though she lacked a newspaper background. According to the Grand Junction City Directory, she later became the general manager of the Sentinel Printing Company,...
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A mortician and a volunteer with the Mesa County Oral History Project. He was born in Colorado to Thomas F. Callahan and Josephine “Josie” (Hurley) Callahan, the children of Irish immigrants. The 1910 US Census shows the family living in Teller County when Bill was two years old. His father was working as a plumber with his own business and his mother was a homemaker. The family moved to Grand Junction later that year, where Thomas and a partner...
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She was born in Princeton, Kansas. After high school, she received a scholarship for a business school in Topeka. During that time, her parents moved to Fruita, Colorado to escape the Dust Bowl. After finishing school, she followed and took her first job in the law office of Silmon Smith in Grand Junction. She then took a job as a secretary in the office of Western Slope Wholesale Grocers. After marrying James “Jim” Kyle in Los Angeles on November...
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She was born in Park City, Utah and came to Mesa County, Colorado in 1906, when she was one. The family lived for a time on a ranch on Salt Creek twenty miles from Collbran, then moved to Grand Junction, Colorado around the time Mary turned six. She graduated from Grand Junction High School in 1923. During her first marriage, she lived in Death Valley with her husband, who was engaged in gold mining there. She later married Edwin A. Cox and together...
8) Madam Fran
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According to Mesa County Oral History Project interviewee Mary Plaisted, Fran was the madam of a higher end brothel in a nice part of town (nicer than Grand Junction’s red-light district in any case). She also owned a double decker horse-drawn carriage in which beautifully dressed prostitutes rode. The carriage and its occupants probably served as advertising for the brothel. It may also be the same carriage that Mary Agnes (Robinson) Cox refers...
9) Gayle Gerson
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"Gayle has studied under the guidance of many artists in watercolor, oil and experimental workshops. She is a signature member of the Colorado Watercolor Society and the Western Federation of Watercolor Societies and the National Collage Society. She teaches mixed-media classes at the Art Center in Grand Junction, Colorado and does contract workshops. She regularly shows her work in many venues throughout Colorado and her art is in many private...
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An immigrant from Italy who came to the United States in 1908. He settled in the Pomona area of Mesa County, Colorado, on a truck farm with bottomland in the Colorado River. He wrote back to Italy asking for a mail-order bride. Rosina “Rose” Paola arrived in June 1913, and they were married on July 20, 1913. Together they had nine children. After picking and washing produce, he and his children sold it out of a truck in areas around Grand Junction....
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She was born in Grand Junction, Colorado to Hugh E. Soule and Anna (Olston) Soule. Her father was a salesman in a general store. Her mother was a homemaker. Elberta was a distant relation of Silas Stillman Soule, an abolitionist on the underground railroad and the commander of Company D in the 1st Colorado Cavalry (in this capacity, he refused to allow his troops to fire on defenseless Cheyenne people during the Sand Creek Massacre, and later testified...
12) James "Jim" Kyle
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An officer in the U.S. Army during World War II. After the war, he worked for Independent Lumber managing lumberyards around the Western Slope. Wherever he and his wife Evelyn moved they established and acted in community theaters. They established community theaters in Cortez and Meeker, and started Telluride Arts, now known as the Telluride Council for the Arts. He and Evelyn were recognized by the governor of Colorado as significant contributors...
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The 1930 US Census record indicates that she was born in Colorado, as were her parents. She was likely born to William and Grace Sprague in Teller County. The 1910 US Census shows her living with her parents there at the age of one. William worked as a teamster and Grace was a homemaker. William's line of work took the family around the West. The family lived in Silver Bow, Montana in 1920, and the census for that year shows that Francis had a little...
14) Walter Walker
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He was the publisher of The Daily Sentinel and a leading Democrat in Grand Junction, Colorado. He became the state Democratic Party chairman in the 1920's. He was behind the deal of William Moyer to build a community swimming pool in Lincoln Park, and the deal that brought in the Fruit Grower’s Association. He also backed the Goodwill and Salvation Army charities. He was an organizer of the campaign to build the Avalon Theater and brought acts...
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He was born in Nebraska, and raised in Lincoln and in Stockton, Kansas. His father was Albert Look and his mother Marie Look. Both parents were the children of German immigrants. They ran a grocery store, a dry goods store, and then a creamery. While in high school, he was active in theater productions, sang bass in a local barbershop quartet, and sang in the Methodist choir. He attended the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, where he studied journalism,...
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She was born in Harper, Iowa to Peter Baker and Amelia (Burkenbine) Baker. In 1900, when Grace was 4, the US Census shows the family living in Rio Blanco County, Colorado, where Grace’s father was a farm laborer and her mother was a homemaker. According to Grace, she attended grade school in Glenburn, North Dakota.
By 1910, Peter and Amelia Baker had divorced and Grace was living with her mother in Montrose, North Dakota, where Amelia was a servant...
17) Harold E. Bryant
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Harold Bryant was born in Pickrell, Nebraska to John Edward Bryant and Anna (Soule) Bryant. US Census records indicate that the family moved to the Appleton area of Mesa County, Colorado sometime between 1900 and 1910. There, they homesteaded. Harold Bryant, as the only boy of several children, did much of the farm's labor. His father was a Dunkard (Church of the Brethren) and, according to Al Look, “a tough old religionist.” Harold rejected the...
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He was born in Columbia, Missouri to Leonard Haseman, a professor at Columbia University, and Elosia Belle (Fish) Haseman, a homemaker. He attended David Henry Hickman High School, where he was in the Latin Club, the orchestra, and the all-state orchestra. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Missouri. There, he was in Lamda Chi Alpha, played football, and was in the Stripes and Diamonds and the Pistol Club. He received a science...
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Social worker, 4H participant, and early Twentieth century resident of Fruitvale, Colorado. She was born in Lincoln, Nebraska to William Henry Borschell and Edith Eliza (Jaynes) Borschell. US Census records indicate that the family had moved to the Fruitvale area of Mesa County, Colorado by at least 1910, when Velma was seven years old. There, they lived on and ran a fruit farm. She grew up helping her father in the orchards.
She graduated from...
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He was the one-time owner, along with his sister, of Cross Orchards in Mesa County, Colorado. Cross Orchards was the largest fruit growing operation in the county for many years. He was born in Vermont. His father was Timothy Cross, who is listed in U.S. Census records from 1850-1870 as a tavern keeper, merchant, and retail grocer with a net worth in real estate equivalent to what would be around $100,000 today. His older sister Isabel Cross (shown...
