Mesa County (Colo.) -- History
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Grace and Ralph Inskeep talk about coming to Mack, Colorado with Grace’s family in 1920. They speak about Ralph’s job working for the Bureau of Reclamation at Camp 7 and his subsequent job as a trackman for the Uintah Railway. They discuss the people and businesses of Loma and Mack, and living in the old Sunset School building. Ralph talks about working at Mesa College as a maintenance man. They speak about attending the Church of the Brethren...
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Voice Recording
Sarah Wood and Kermit Brubaker memorialize Cora “Mom” Sheets, a longtime Loma resident and volunteer for the Lower Valley Hospital (now Family Health West), during a 1970 episode of the radio program Hymn Time with the Country Parson on KQIL radio in Grand Junction, Colorado. 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 Colorado....
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Voice Recording
Katherine Fuoco describes her family’s experience as German-Russian immigrants living in Loma, Colorado and elsewhere in the American West in the 1910’s and 20’s, raising sugar beets and homesteading. She also talks briefly about her life with husband James Fuoco, an Italian immigrant and car mechanic who went onto found the Fuoco Motor Company in Grand Junction, Colorado. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project,...
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Voice Recording
Sarah Wood talks about coming to Loma, Colorado with her husband and children in 1961. She reminisces about her time working as a programming director for the nursing home at the Lower Valley Hospital, from 1966 to 1973. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
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Voice Recording
Reford Theobold, who would go on to become mayor of Grand Junction, talks about his family’s arrival in Loma and their ownership of the Loma General Store. He recalls his career in radio and television, beginning as a broadcaster on KEXO AM and ending as a TV sports anchor for KJCT at the time of the interview. He remembers jokes that he would tell on air that poked fun at his hometown of Loma. He also describes a line of t-shirts that he made and...
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Compound
Mary Plaisted talks about early days in Mesa County, Colorado, her marriage to Thomas Pierce, a farmer in Loma, and the busy life of a homemaker on the farm. She discusses various locations and institutions around the Western Slope, including the Paradox Valley, the Cowpuncher’s Reunion, and the Little Book Cliff Railway. She speaks about her warm family life as a child in Kansas, and life in Western Colorado after her father’s death. She also...
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Voice Recording
Frances Idler remembers coming to Loma, Colorado in 1938 as part of a Federal resettlement program during the Dust Bowl. She talks about the school and religious life of her family and the town. She recalls moving into a house owned by the Holly Sugar Company with her second husband and their subsequent move to Fruita, where they began taking in foster children. She speaks about some of the many foster children that she and her husband cared for over...
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Compound
In a two-part interview carried out over two days, Howard Shults talks about his experiences as a rancher and auctioneer on Colorado’s Western Slope. In part one, he talks about the arrival of his parents in Mesa County in 1903, their teaching careers at Pear Park and in Fruita, and his father’s move to a career as an auctioneer. He speaks about his childhood in Grand Junction and Collbran, his graduation from Grand Junction High School in 1923,...
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Voice Recording
Kermit Brubaker talks about coming to Loma, Colorado and assuming the role of pastor at the United Presbyterian Church in 1961. He discusses life in the church and his role in helping church members remodel the church. He speaks about his long-running radio programs, “Hymn Time with the Country Parson” and “Melody in the Night.” He describes the young people of the church, their practical jokes, and his good relationship with them. The interview...
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Compound
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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Compound
Marjorie Thomas describes her childhood on a homestead in the New Liberty area of Mesa County, Colorado. She talks about the difficulty of getting across the Big Salt Wash near Fruita when it flooded. She discusses Sunday school and religious services that existed in the community for twenty-one years, until the lack of leadership caused people to drive to Loma for church. She speaks about the history of the New Liberty School and about social clubs...
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Voice Recording
Gertrude Rader talks about the New Deal and its effect on her farm in Loma, Colorado. She then describes at length the migration of Ute tribal members from the Ouray/Silverton area to Eastern Utah every fall in the early Twentieth century, their camping near Rader's childhood home in Kannah Creek, and her observations of the Ute people. She also discusses her family's pioneer history in the Whitewater/Kannah Creek area, her time teaching in rural...
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Voice Recording
Gertrude Rader talks about the profession and lives of teachers, who were primarily women, in Western Colorado during the early Twentieth century. She discusses how, in small communities, women were expected to be much more than teachers including: Doctors’ assistants in a pinch, de facto members of the families that they boarded with in cases of illness or maternity, and moral pillars of the community. She includes many anecdotes from her own teaching...
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Voice Recording
Theodore Simineo talks about the history of violence between sheep and cattle ranchers near Whitewater, Colorado. He remembers helping to drive cattle over the Grand Mesa at the age of six, other aspects of cattle drives, and his life as a cowboy. He describes community dances that took place in Kannah Creek schools or community halls. He speaks about the transportation of cattle by rail from Gunnison and Whitewater. He talks about working as a coal...
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Voice Recording
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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Voice Recording
To mark the centennial celebration of the town of Grand Junction, Colorado in 1981, the Mesa County Oral History Project wrote and recorded several radio plays about local history. Beginning on September 26, 1981, local radio stations KSTR, KREX-AM, KREX-FM, and KMSA broadcast the plays. Authors of the plays used interviews recorded by the Mesa County Oral History Project as inspiration. This archival recording contains the play Summer Fun, about...
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Voice Recording
In a lecture and panel discussion at the Palisade’s Taylor Elementary School, Evelyn Kyle speaks about the history of the Mesa County Oral History Project and its invaluable role in collecting local stories. An interview panel of Evelyn Kyle, Paula Buttolph, Mary Faye Hampton, and Luella Morgan speak about their lives, the lives of women in the area, and Western Slope history. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County...
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Voice Recording
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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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...
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Voice Recording
Gertrude Rader talks at length about the Tabequache band of the Ute and her frequent contact with them when they camped in Kannah Creek during their annual return migration from the mountains of Colorado to the Uintah Reservation in Utah in the early Twentieth century. She discusses her memories of Chipeta and describes Ute customs she observed. She talks about her pioneering grandfather, and about a serious sheep and cattleman conflict that occurred...
