Events
Collection of event entities.
Pages
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- Redlands Land Survey, Mesa County, Colorado
- Land surveys funded by Captain Worthington and conducted by civil engineer E.L. Morse in 1905. They sought to discern the suitability of the Redlands area for settlement.
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- Rim Rock Drive road-building disaster (Colorado National Monument)
- On December 11, 1932, nine men were killed during the construction of Rim Rock Drive over the Colorado National Monument. Elbert Miracle, who worked for the Civilian Conservation Corps at the time and was helping to build Rim Rock Drive, gives a description of the accident in his oral history interview. According to Miracle, the men were building an “open-faced tunnel” into rock. Crews were trying to hurry so that Thomas Secrest, who headed the operation, could get through the area when he came later to the Monument. A man named Halloway was on top of the rock with a jack hammer when a shot of dynamite was exploded in the tunnel below. Several other men were also working up top. Miracle does not explain exactly how the accident happened, but three men, including his brother-in-law, were pitched off the side of the rock and into a canyon, where they died. Miracle says that five other men died on top of the rock. All told, nine local men died (“Monument canon to be memorial to nine who died in rockslide on Rimrock Road Tues. afternoon,” Daily Sentinel, 13 December 1932). Miracle names seven of the deceased: Halloway, Bill (or possibly Bob) Fuller, Buster Marlen, Clyde Vanloon, Harley Beeson, Carmichael, and Rupp. Miracle had a stomach issue at that time, and was some yards away from the worksite dealing with his issue when the accident happened. He helped retrieve the bodies after the accident. Mike “Reveille” Marshall, the commanding officer of the Civilian Conservation Corps during that time, lays the blame for the accident at the feet of Thomas Secrest. Secrest, he said, was ruthless in his treatment of the CCC workers, and drove them to be unsafe in their work by insisting on unrealistic progress in the road’s construction. Complaints about lack of attention to safety protocols were filed after the accident.
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- Salida-Aspen Concert Series
- The Salida Aspen Concert six-week series grew out of one concert that was held in July 1977 and was sponsored by U.S. Soil in conjunction with the Salida Chamber of Commerce.
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- Shooting of J.W. "Big Kid" Eames
- In December 1938, J.W. “Big Kid” Eames, who ran a gambling establishment called the Biltmore in the Reed Building at 3rd and Main Streets, was shot and killed by three masked robbers: Fern “Bubbles” Sadler, who ran the Copeco dance hall, and his friends and business partners Tommy Humotoff and Otis Slane (According to D.A. Brockett, Sadler ran the Mile-Away Dance Hall, but Grand Junction police officer Fritz Becker, who was an assisting officer the evening Eames was shot, insists that Sadler ran the Copeco and not the Mile-Away. The Grand Junction City Directory shows Cora Sadler, Fern's mother with whom he lived, living on Fruita rural route 1 in 1937, which would corroborate the Copeco Dance Hall. Cora later moved to Pomona, and so it's possible that Fern may have operated the Mile-Away upon his release from prison for killing Becker). The three had worked robberies together in California, and had been paroled into the custody of Charley Lumley in Mesa County. The three men were tried, convicted, and sentenced to lengthy prison terms, but were each given early parole. According to Grand Junction Police Officer Fritz Becker, Sadler received early parole after his mother gave then Governor Edwin Carl Johnson, who was seeking reelection, $8,000.
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- Shooting of Jim Patsios by Patrick Levintis
- In 1938, Greek American Patrick Levintis shot and killed Greek American Jim Patsios. Levintis, who ran a private gambling establishment above Watson’s Cigar Store in the 300 block of Main Street, had been paying police protection money to Patsios, who ran the Spanish pool hall in the 200 block of Colorado Avenue. When Levintis was arrested despite the money that he had been paying Patsios, he had Patsios brought to his gambing hall, where he was bound in a chair by an associate, and then shot in the head by Levintis.
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- Ski-Hi Stampede
- A professional rodeo that has taken place since 1919. Its website calls it the oldest professional rodeo in Colorado. It takes place at the Ski Hi Complex in Monte Vista.
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- Smallpox epidemic, [1881-1885]
- An epidemic of smallpox that occurred on the Western Slope in 1881.
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- Snow of 1919
- A large snowfall in Mesa County, Colorado. According to game warden John Duncan Hart, the Winter of 1919-20 was hard and severe on wildlife. The harshness of the weather meant that the Department of Fish and Game had to make arrangements for the feeding of the California quail, only recently introduced to the state of Colorado. Even so, hundreds of quail died. Thanksgiving Day saw snow so deep that several trucks with chains were abandoned between Grand Junction and the Durham Stockyards.
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- Social Justice march on Grand Junction City Council, June 3, 2020
- 400 demonstrators marched into a meeting of Grand Junction’s city council and demanded that council people let them speak. According to activist Shannon Robinson, with the organization Right and Wrong that organized the march in the wake of George Floyd’s death, Right & Wrong had contacted a city councilmember and let it be known that they would be marching on the meeting. Yet several council members were surprised at the large crowd of people of color. City council person Philip Pe’a later made a controversial comment about the demonstration, saying that he wondered at the time if he should have brought his gun. Robinson helped diffuse a potential disturbance outside of the meeting, channeling the energy of protesters away from the chambers’ doors and into chanting and displaying signs along the street. Inside of the meeting, several protesters and some counterprotesters spoke. Bishop delivered the demands of the local African-American community, asking for changes in education, the creation of a community oversight community, partnering with police to end harassment, and the removal of Walter Walker’s name from the Colorado Mesa University soccer field. At the following meeting, some community members came armed to the meeting in counter-protest.