Organizations
Collection for organization entities.
Pages
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- First Baptist Church (Grand Junction, Colorado)
- The First Baptist Church was one of the first churches organized in Grand Junction and the second congregation with its own church building (the First Methodist Church seems to have organized first and built their building just prior). In the February 3, 1883 edition of the Grand Junction News, the article “A Baptist Church” mentions a meeting to take place in the Mayor’s office for the organization of a Baptist Church. By February 10, 1883, the church had nine members enrolled. It’s first service happened less than a week later, with Reverend T.R. Palmer presiding. Palmer, whose home church was in Boulder, helped with the initial organization of the church. The church seems to have held prayer meetings and services in the homes of members, such as W.G. Bennett, prior to possessing its own building. The March 10, 1883 edition of the News reported that the church elected its first officers, and elected Reverend L.E. Duncan to preside over services until a regular pastor could be found. By March 17, 1883, construction on the church itself had begun, with the News reporting that the building would cost $2,000. According to local historian Bill Nelson, the building was to have been built on White Avenue, where the town of Grand Junction was giving free land to churches that wanted to build. A group of Baptists, including M.A. Glascoe, wrote and signed a letter protesting the location of the church on government land. The church was built instead on Grand Avenue, on or near the location of the current Mesa County Libraries Central Branch at 443 N. 6th Street. The church may have struggled to secure the funds necessary for the church’s completion, because the News reported that the Reverend Dr. Palmer went to Gunnison to solicit funds for the building in July 1883. By November of 1883, the building was apparently completed. Kermit Brubaker served as a pastor there in the early 1980's.
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- First Christian Church (Grand Junction, Colorado)
- The original First Christian Church was located on White Avenue (at the intersection of 8th Street), along with most of the town's early churches, and was possibly established as early as 1883. During the mid-1920's, the church was embroiled in some controversy when its head, the Reverend George Rossman, became the head of the local Ku Klux Klan. Rossman was a publicly outspoken opponent of immigrants, Catholics, and the threat he perceived in them to American Protestant morality (source Hidden Empire: The Ku Klux Klan in Colorado by Robert Goldberg, p. 160). Shortly after becoming the leader of the Klan, it appears that Rossman was displaced as head of the church. Oral history interviewee Harold Zimmerman reports that Dean Haggard became the interim pastor at the church sometime around 1927. The First Christian Church is still in operation today, and according to their website is affiliated with The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in North America.
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- First Church of Christ, Scientist (Grand Junction, Colorado)
- The first Christian Science church in Grand Junction, Colorado was founded by Susan Etta (Lewis) Carpenter in the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth century. Originally called Carpenter Hall, it was initially located on North First Street. The church then moved to 535 N 7th Street, a building they occupied for many years before selling it in the 2010's. The church maintained a reading room at 113 N 6th Street in the 2000's before moving both the church and bookstore to 839 Grand Avenue, where they resided as of 2024.
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- First Church of the Nazarene (Grand Junction, Colorado)
- According to David Sundal, whose father Olaf Sundal was one of the first clergymen at the church, the First Church of the Nazarene in Grand Junction dates from about 1920. Around 1920, two young preachers came to town and held a series of large, evangelical-style tent meetings at 6th and Main Streets. These meetings were very popular, and a number of Methodists left the Methodist Church in order to join what eventually became the First Church of the Nazarene. The Church of the Nazarene as a national organization dates from 1908, and consisted largely, both in Mesa County and elsewhere, of people with an evangelical persuasion who believed in winning new converts and in delivering the gospel with conviction and spirit. When Sundal took over the church in August 1930, it was struggling and had low membership. At that time, the church was located at Rood Avenue between 7th and 8th Streets in a “squat,” unattractive building (likely at 725 Rood Avenue, a building with a finished basement that dates from 1920). With Sundal’s gift for speaking and his organizing abilities, the church became full of congregants. He started a Sunday school in the church using a curtain to divide the school from the main service. He oversaw the building of a basement to be used as a lunch room, and built a frame building behind the main church. The church also held an afternoon Sunday school in Spanish. Early congregants included Ella Wilson Alcott of the Redlands, Mr. Tomlin of Palisade, the city forester, a person named Blakenbeeker, and school teacher Helen Mary of Maine. The church still exists, and is now located at 2802 Patterson Road.
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- First Congregational United Church of Christ (Grand Junction, Colorado)
- A church established in Grand Junction, Colorado sometime in the 1891. The father of Doctor Everett Munro, a prominent surgeon in town, was a minister there around 1912. The first church was located on Rood Avenue around 5th or 6th Street. The church is now located at 1425 N. 5th Street, across the street from Grand Junction High School.