Highline Canal, Mesa County, Colorado
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Charles Moore discusses his career in the U.S. Grazing Service, ranching, and tension between sheep and cattle ranchers on Colorado's Western Slope. 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
Frieda Miller talks about her pioneer ranching family’s arrival in Palisade, Colorado, and about the exploits of her colorful father, Eben “Mac” Miller. She speaks about her school days in Palisade and Grand Junction, and about childhood games she played (such as Duck on a Rock). She discusses her later life and marriage with farmer and carpenter George Weaver, and her long period as a vegetarian. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County...
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Compound
Harry Sylvester Godby discusses his time spent working for and traveling with the Robinson Brothers Circus before moving to Grand Junction, Colorado. Harry also talks about his itinerant childhood moving from place to place, and the wide variety of jobs he worked throughout his life, including construction, mining, blacksmithing and potato farming, and how he was affected by the Great Depression. He shares his discovery of a large pile of boxes with...
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Voice Recording
Reba Ball talks about her upbringing in Palisade, Colorado, the history of Vineland, the ferry over the Colorado River, and the Seventh Day Adventist Church and school. She remembers growing up on a peach farm and aspects of peach farming, such as picking and shipping peaches. She discusses smudging to prevent frost, diseases and pests common to peaches, and pesticides. Harvey Ball speaks about his career as a manager of grocery stores, including...
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Voice Recording
Mary talks about her early childhood in Kansas as one of nine children and her family's move to Colorado upon the death of her father. Mary details the train and its passengers during the move, including Russian immigrants coming to work the beet fields, and her mother's outreach. She mentions her mothers career training riding horses as a way to support the family. She talks about her relationships, children, and the struggle she faced trying to...
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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...
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Voice Recording
Virgil Hickman and his wife discuss their lives growing up around Mesa County. Virgil’s grandfather began as a miner in Palisade and Cameo, Colorado, and his family turned to fruit farming. Hickman describes planting the first fruit orchard on East Orchard Mesa, the labor involved with peach growing, and the development of the area. He touches on the businesses, social scene, and Christmas celebrations in Palisade during the early 1900s. The interview...
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Voice Recording
Gertrude Rader discusses her time spent teaching in Loma, Colorado in the early 1900s. She talks about the role of the sugar beet company as landowner and employer in the area. She includes details about the schools, businesses, and churches that existed in Loma, her involvement starting Mesa County’s first hot school lunch program, and her experiences attending an annual fish fry in Horsethief Canyon. Gertrude also shares memories about the many...
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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 A Natural Resource:...
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Voice Recording
Arvid Muhr talks about his family of Swedish Immigrants, about peach farming on East Orchard Mesa in Mesa County, and about the development of irrigation water in the Grand Valley. Mr. Muhr also discusses the Teller Institute baseball team, made up of American Indians that attended the school, and about working on a hydroelectric dam near Palisade. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County...
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Voice Recording
Carl Forsman, the son of Swedish immigrants, talks about early life in the town of Mesa, Colorado. 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.
Format:
Voice Recording
Sisters Dorothy (Raber) Beard and Marjorie (Raber) Likes talk about the history of their family in Fruita, Colorado. They speak about Will Minor, the goat herder and self-educated photographer, author, and amateur lepidopterist who discovered the butterfly Papilio Indra Minori on the Colorado National Monument. They discuss homesteads that the Beard family owned in the canyons that comprise the current day McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area....
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Compound
Dorothy Ottman discusses her childhood in Grand Junction, fruit growing and agricultural industry in Mesa County, and the social life and customs of women, youth, and others in the Grand Junction area. 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
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
Frank Simonetti Sr. talks about his arrival in the United States from southern Italy in 1914 and his eventual arrival in Grand Junction, Colorado in 1918, where he began a long career with the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad. He remembers a fire that burnt down the D&RG icehouse, the railroad shop strike in 1922, and working a seven-day work week for thirty years. He recalls different kinds of locomotives. Angela Simonetti recalls growing up in the...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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....
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Voice Recording
Ruth Echternach talks about her arrival in Palisade, Colorado in 1917 and her graduation from the Palisade School. She discusses the history of early Palisade and its people. She speaks about her marriage to local farmer Marion Echternach, life on a fruit farm, and raising children. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
