Mesa County Oral History Project

The Mesa County Oral History Project began as a joint project of the Museums of Western Colorado and Mesa County Libraries (MCL) in 1975. The Oral History Project collected tape-recorded interviews with pioneers of Mesa County and surrounding areas, and interviews with the children of pioneers. The Central Library housed the duplicate audio cassettes and provided patron access to the histories. The Museum stored the master tapes and kept files and transcripts related to the oral history collection. The Mesa County Historical Society also contributed significantly to the Oral History Project by collaborating with the library and museum to select interviewees, and by providing interviewers and other volunteers. Mesa County Libraries no longer partner with the Museum in housing duplicate copies of tapes. But the library now works with the Museum to digitize interviews from the Mesa County Oral History Project and to provide online access to the interviews through Pika, the library catalog. The Museum continues to house the original audio cassettes, interview transcripts, and other source material for the project. The Library and the Museums of Western Colorado still record oral histories with residents who have important knowledge of the area’s history. Please note that some interviews contain language that listeners or readers may consider offensive. Mesa County Libraries does not condone such language, but has included interviews in their entirety in the interest of preserving history.

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Lecture: Country School Legacy on the Western Slope of Colorado by Andrew Gulliford
Dr. Andrew Gulliford, head of The Country School Legacy Project (a survey of rural schools over eight states, funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities) presents information from the project in a lecture at the Museum of Western Colorado. The lecture includes reflections from rural school teachers in Colorado, including teaching techniques, discipline problems, infectious diseases, and issues with poorly constructed buildings. Teachers also offer opinions on education in rural schools, and the decline of said schools. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Letter to Josephine (Taylor) Dickey from Wayne Aspinall
A letter from US Representative Wayne Aspinall of Colorado written to Josephine (Taylor) Dickey, expressing condolences upon the death of her husband, William Wesley Taylor III.
Memoirs of Cordelia Evelyn (Hamilton) Files
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 the ravages of diphtheria and scarlet fever, which took the life of her sister. She talks about Doctor James Beard, his house calls, his attempt to treat cancer with radioactive material in the 1890’s, his use of uranium discs to create x-rays, and his home observatory where he was an amateur astronomer. She recounts the rivalry between Fruita and what was then the separate the town of Cleveland, which bordered Fruita on the southeast. She speaks about dressing toads in baby clothes, making dolls out of corn cobs, being watched after by a neighborhood dog, and their horse who liked to jump the fence and join parades. She talks about her study of the bible and search for an appropriate church as a teenager. She tells about working for Jay Nearing’s summer ranching operation near De Beque, about getting her teaching license, and about teaching at the Hunter School. She remembers being placed in a sanitarium in Pueblo for severe arthritis in 1921, and the disastrous Great Pueblo Flood from the Arkansas River that inundated the sanitarium and destroyed much of the city. She describes life in and around Glade Park, where she taught school and met her husband, Loyd Files. She talks about her marriage to Files and their life in the cabin he built on their homestead. She remembers the students at the Pipeline School and Sleeper School, how they were taught, how they learned, how they dressed for winter, and their Christmas pageants. She talks about raising sheep, growing crops, and her role as a homemaker and farmer. She speaks about the adoption of her daughters. She talks about the Dust Bowl conditions that, along with the Great Depression, made life difficult for many Glade Park farmers, and about moving to Fruitvale during the 1930’s because of those conditions. She recalls the house and salvage yard that they bought at 2028 North Avenue in 1940. She describes their purchase of the acreage that would later become the neighborhood just east of Lincoln Park, between North and Grand Avenues and 23rd Street and 28 ¼ Road. She speaks of the many people in need that lived with the Files family over the years. She discusses the many profitable business ventures started by Loyd Files. She recalls joining the Mormon church in 1960 and life in the church. She recounts Loyd’s role in starting the Grand Mesa Little League. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Music of Pioneers Recording of the Mesa County Historical Society
Citizens of the De Beque, Colorado community provide a program on the music of pioneers for the Mesa County Historical Society. Participants play exemplars of pioneer music, and talk about De Beque’s pioneer musicians and the music they played. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Naval and Air Forces in World War I: Lectures by Al Look and William Kirk Bunte
In his lecture Wooden Ships and Iron Men, former Navy seaman Al Look talks about the role of US naval power in World War I. William Kirk Bunte talks about air power in the war in his lecture Those Magnificent Men in the Flying Machines. Look and Bunte’s lectures were part of the Museums of Western Colorado’s series on World War I in 1982. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Nineteenth Interview with Al Look
Al Look talks about his role in helping to discover Fremont Indian ruins in what became the Look-Turner Site in Utah. He speaks about Hannah Wormington, the archaeologist who excavated the site. He also discusses a flash flood on Diamond Creek in which rancher Laura Turner was killed. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Ninth Interview with Dudley W. Mitchell
Dudley W. Mitchell gives an account of the Lamar Bank Robbery of 1928, and discusses the role of Grand Junction, Colorado resident George Abshier in the crime. He also talks about his teenage years working for the Holly Sugar Company in Grand Junction and describes the process by which the factory made sugar from sugar beets. 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.
Ninth Lecture by Al Look: Natural History of Mesa County and Western Colorado
A lecture given at Regis College by Al Look, a Mesa County historian and amateur paleontologist. Look discusses the geology of Grand Junction, the Grand Mesa, and surrounding area. He also describes the multitude of dinosaur fossils found in this area. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Ninth interview with Al Look
Alfred Alvine “Al” Look tells about his childhood growing up in Kansas. He talks about the theater productions his school put on and his role in those. He describes his education in journalism at the University of Nebraska, publishing a magazine called Ah Go On, and working in a store to help pay his tuition. He also talks about his contributions to the Mesa College library (now Colorado Mesa University). The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Oil Shale, Past and Present: Lecture by Armand de Beque and Robert Dal Porto
In a general meeting of the Mesa County Historical Society, Armand de Beque describes the history of oil shale development in De Beque and the Piceance Basin, Colorado. He offers three stories for how it was discovered that oil shale can burn. He describes the founding of the Shale Oil Syndicate, an organization founded by his father, Dr. W.A.E. de Beque, William R. Warren, George Newton, and William Dinkel. He explains the lengthy process the Shale Oil Syndicate went through to survey oil shale claims and get them patented. He describes the first shale plant in Colorado located on Dry Fork, which had its first run of shale on July 1, 1917, but was shut down shortly after that due to insufficient equipment. He mentions other early attempts to produce shale that also folded quickly, including the Washington Shale Plant and Mount Logan Oil Shale Company. He describes an incident that occurred on July 30, 1921, when a tramway cable snapped in Wheeler Gulch, sending 12 Schuyler-Dole Shale Company miners crashing 2,000 feet down the mountain, leaving six dead, three seriously injured, and killing an additional miner, who was afraid to ride the tram and chose to walk, who was completely severed at the waist by the whipping cable. He also describes the Index Shale Company founded by Harry Lewis Brown, which produced oil in 1918 and later produced a fertilizer and medicinal salve from the byproducts of oil shale production, both of which were removed from markets after the Department of Agriculture suggested they were carcinogenic. Following Armand de Beque, Chevron representative Robert Dal Porto describes the present state of oil shale development in Western Colorado after Exxon laid off 2,200 oil shale workers and pulled out of the Colony Project on May 2, 1982. He describes the current shale resource holdings possessed by Chevron, Sohio Superior, Occidental, the Getty Oil Company, Texaco, and Tosco. He clarifies that oil shale is actually a deposit of silt and clay containing kerogen, a waxy organic precursor to oil that can be refined into a high-viscosity synthetic oil. He describes the retort process used to extract shale oil from the rock, the large water and electrical power requirements needed to conduct that process, and the economic challenges that affect its commercial viability. He describes Occidental’s experiments with developing a more cost-effective “in situ” process for extracting shale oil from the ground, which did not meet expectations in tests. He concludes by expressing his personal opinion that oil shale has a future, but that it will take some time to develop more efficient processes and would likely require tax write-offs for research and development. This recording is provided by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Oil shale development in Western Colorado: Lecture by Eric Hoffman
In a speech given during the oil shale boom, USGS oil shale supervisor Eric Hoffman talks about oil shale reserves in Western Colorado and the West, with focus on the Piceance Basin and the Green River Basin. He speaks about the potential for large oil shale development, the chemistry of oil shale, the geology of locations where oil shale is found, and the large amount of water needed for oil shale processing. He discusses the oil shale boom centered around De Beque, Colorado in the 1920’s and the corporations involved in oil shale development in the 1980’s, including: Chevron, Union Oil, Exxon, Paraho, and the Rio Blanco Shale Company. He describes the different processes used to mine oil shale and to extract oil from the shale. He talks about the adverse environmental impacts of shale development on ranches and wildlands, and touches on reclamation projects. This recording is made available via signed release by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
Panel Discussion on the History of Glade Park, Colorado
A Mesa County Historical Society panel of early Glade Park, Colorado residents Dorothy Beard, Mrs. Floyd Carpenter, Eva Leslie, and Kenneth Thompson discuss the pioneer history of the area. This recording is made available by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries, the Museums of Western Colorado and the Mesa County Historical Society.

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