Frontier and pioneer life -- Colorado
Showing
1 - 9
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, query time: 3.78s
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...
Format:
Compound
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...
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...
Format:
Compound
Margaret Snook describes the voyage to the United States from her native Scotland in 1910, and life in the Van Houten mining camp near Raton, Colorado. She and her daughter Ida May (Snook) Waggoner talk about William T. and Clara P. Snook, and their establishment of a homestead in what became known as Snooks Bottom. Margaret Snook discusses life in Craig and Axel, Colorado, where she and her husband Guy Snook worked supplying homesteaders with various...
Format:
Compound
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...
Format:
Compound
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.
Format:
Compound
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...
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.
Format:
Compound
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...
