DRIVE-THRU / CURBSIDE PICKUP

Passwords are now required to access your account. To create a password, select "Reset my Password" from the Login screen (email address required). For further assistance, please visit the Library Account Passwords FAQ page for instructions or call the library at 970-243-4442.

The Central Library will be closed March 31 for Easter Sunday. View all holiday closures.


Showing 1 - 20 of 29 , query time: 0.02s
Cover Image
Format:
Compound
Early Mesa County resident Virgil Hickman discusses farm life in Palisade and East Orchard Mesa, including irrigation ditches and dams, water rights of farmers and ranchers, hunting deer during the Great Depression, the methods used in keeping peach orchards bug-free, weekly band concerts, making apple butter, and the Palisade Peach Festival. He also talks about building Skyway Road on the Grand Mesa with picks, blasting powder and horses. This recording...
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
Edithe Pryor discusses her upbringing on a farm in Palisade, Colorado in the early Twentieth century as the daughter of a Welsh immigrant father, and the agricultural history of Palisade, Clifton and the east end of the Grand Valley. She also talks about irrigating land, her mother’s homemaking and recipes for apple deserts, using an old wood-fired cook stove, and getting drinking water from an irrigation ditch. The interview was conducted by the...
Cover Image
Format:
Compound
Thomas Campbell of Clifton talks about the roads, towns, farms, ranches and geography of places throughout Mesa County, Colorado. He speaks about the Molina flour mill in the town of Molina and about the history of local agriculture. He talks about the history of Clifton, its settlement, and churches. He describes early agriculture and methods of clearing the land for crops. He remembers aspects of peach, pear and apple growing, including pests and...
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
John Brach, the son of Italian immigrants, talks about his family moving from Aguilar, Colorado to Loma so that they could work in agriculture instead of the coal mines. He speaks about relying on ditch water for drinking water, using carbide lights, and a coal stove. He remembers people who came to Loma as part of a Federal resettlement program during the Dust Bowl, including the De Kruger, Bittle and Beede families. He recalls other residents and...
Cover Image
Format:
Compound
In a letter read aloud to his niece, Marion Echternach talks about the history of his immigrant family in the United States, including their settlement in Oklahoma in 1880. He speaks about his boyhood in Peckham, Oklahoma. He discusses the “land boom” in Palisade, Colorado at the beginning of the Twentieth century and his family’s role in settling the area. He remembers visiting his brother Bill, an employee at the Liberty Bell Mine near Telluride....
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
Lou Guccini describes growing up in Loma, Colorado, his father’s sheepranching business, speaking Italian in the home, and learning English in school. He remembers loving baseball and playing on town baseball teams with his brothers against the town teams of Hotchkiss, Rhone, Fruita, Appleton, and other locales. He describes how he became a sugar beet farmer with the help of his father-in-law, Thomas Wayne Beede. He recalls German prisoners of war...
Cover Image
Format:
Compound
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...
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
In an interview recorded November 8, 1977, Fred Ames and his wife Emma Lillian (Stocks) Ames discuss the history of Sinbad Valley and its settlement by his family and others. In second and third interviews recorded on November 15 and December 3, 1977 (transcript only*), Fred Ames talks about the McCarty Gang, their stomping grounds in Sinbad Valley and nearby Eastern Utah, and about meeting Tom McCarty as a child. He discusses homesteading and...
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
Cecil Harper talks about his memories from early childhood in Loma, Colorado. He speaks about his father’s position as a surveyor on the Highline Canal, history of the dam’s construction, and about the celebration that was held upon the canal’s completion. He remembers the schools that he attended, including the Loma and Valley View Schools. He recalls his early jobs working for ranching outfits and working as a coal miner before he began life...
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
Lois Long describes the homestead she grew up on near Loma. She remembers living in a tent and then a pre-cut house, and drinking ditch water. She recalls her father and uncle moving the Valley View School to north of the Colorado River in the 1920’s, and the school bus that was sometimes a horse-drawn cart. Leland Buniger talks about his childhood in Grand Junction, Fruita and Loma. He describes farming potatoes, beans and hay. He speaks about...
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
Early Mesa County resident Fred Hulburt discusses his job as a postman, the difficulties of starting a fruit farming business, his views on the treatment of the Utes in the area, building tunnels for the Highline Canal above Cameo, methods used to prevent the codling moth from ruining fruit orchards, and how to properly break wild horses and mules. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration...
Cover Image
Format:
Compound
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...
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
James and Ida Jaenicke talk about moving to Loma, Colorado in 1937 as part of the US Farm Security Administration’s resettlement program for Dust Bowl refugees. They speak about aspects of farm life in Loma, such as relying on ditch water for drinking water. They remember running a dairy farm with 30 cows and 125 chickens. They recall people and stores in Fruita, where they shopped. James talks about his life in the congregation of the United Presbyterian...
Cover Image
Format:
Compound
In a three-part interview conducted over three days, Luisa Landini describes her childhood in Montale, Italy and her life after immigrating to the United States. In part one, she talks about life in Italy, working on a farm and in the fields, and her immigration to the United States via ship at the age of twenty-two. She talks about coming to America to marry Pete Landini and her homesickness for Italy when she arrived. She speaks about the family’s...
Cover Image
Format:
Compound
In one interview captured in five recordings, Kenneth Thompson talks about his life in Mesa County, Colorado. In part one, he remembers moving to Clifton, Colorado, where the family farmed fruit. He recalls homesteading on Glade Park in a log cabin built by his fifteen-year-old brother. He discusses his time as a sheepherder and sheepherding practices, especially those for protecting sheep from various predators. He speaks about trapping predators...
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
Albert Rood describes the life and community involvements of his step-father William Weiser (nephew of William Moyer), his childhood in the Third Fruitridge area and the people who lived there, and stealing watermelons and floating them in the Grand Valley Canal. He also talks about his education at Mesa Junior College, and his work in the field for a Bureau of Entomology laboratory dedicated to eradicating a sugar beet pest. The interview was conducted...
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
Ervin Ormsbee talks about the history of cherry growing in the Grand Valley. Dick Williams speaks about the history of fruit growing, canneries, and agribusiness in Mesa County. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
Emma Nagel, whose family came to the Highpoint area north of Fruita in 1894, talks about agricultural life on her family’s homestead, about badgers, wolves, and wildlife they encountered, and about the Highpoint community’s Christmas celebrations. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
Madge Davis discusses her teenage years in the 1910’s working on the Cross Ranch in Mesa County, thinning peaches and packing peaches with her mom and dad. She describes fruit growing operations on the farm. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of the Mesa County Public Library and the Museum of Western Colorado.
Cover Image
Format:
Voice Recording
Lucille Mahannah, an early education and civic leader in Mesa County, describes her early life on the Hunter Ranch, a ranch established by her family in what later became the Hunter District. She also talks about her career in education as a teacher and as the Mesa County Superintendent of Schools. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado. Note:...