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Marjorie Crow talks about her education in the Palisade School and Palisade High School in the 1920’s and 30’s. She speaks about what she did at home for recreation, and about her mother’s piano tutoring business. She describes Christmas programs, and band and chorus activities. She discusses her higher education at Grand Junction Junior College and the University of Colorado. She talks about her life teaching elementary grades in Delta, at...

Marguerite Beede talks about moving with her husband and children to Loma, Colorado as part of a resettlement program during the Dust Bowl. She reminisces about teaching at the Loma School for over 20 years. She describes the establishment of the Loma Community Hall and its vital place in the community. She remembers some of the town’s locals. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries...

Mesa County, Colorado resident Henry Spomer describes growing up in a German settlement in Russia, including home life, farm practices, schooling, and the Lutheran Church. He talks about moving to Nebraska in his teenage years to escape looming military placement during the Russian Revolution, and eventually moving to Mesa County, where he worked as a beet farmer, railroad employee, and janitor for the Lowell School. The interview was conducted by...

Len and Violet Haseman talk about newspaper research they undertook concerning the history of Cross Orchards farm in Mesa County, Colorado. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado. *Photograph from the 1932 David Henry Hickman High School yearbook.

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...

Effie (Johnson) Silzell discusses the pioneering history of her immigrant family in Mesa County, and the history of Whitewater. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.

Harvey Ball talks about attending Grand Junction Junior College (now Colorado Mesa University) during its first year of existence, about the early teachers at the school, and the school’s creation. He remembers his employment as a manager of Piggly Wiggly and Safeway grocery stores in Grand Junction and Western Colorado from 1925 to 1971. He speaks about the local truck farms, agricultural associations, and dairies that supplied grocery stores....

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 On the Road to Grand...

Lee Toothaker discusses growing alfalfa and peaches and cattle ranching in Palisade, Colorado. He also talks about raising mules on farms in Iowa and Missouri as a child, and about his education and career as a teacher. 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.

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...