Interview with Dorothy Elizabeth (Raber) Beard and Marjorie Agnes (Raber) Likes

Description

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. They describe what local kids did for fun in the early Twentieth century: Climbing Independence Monument, hiking around the canyons of the Colorado National Monument and what is now known as McInnis Canyons, and walking across the high girders of an old river bridge. They talk about early residents of Fruita, including the Nichols and Kelvies families. They describe the large and frequent floods of the Colorado River in the Grand Valley, prior to so much water being diverted from the river to reservoirs. Dorothy recalls the story of her husband encountering a buffalo in Monument Canyon prior to the advent of the Colorado National Monument, and recounts his other encounters with wildlife. She remembers having to liquidate their goat herd during the 1930’s, possibly due to overgrazing. She and Marjorie talk about encounters with Ute people and Native American artifacts. The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado. *Photograph of Marjorie (Raber) Likes from the 1928 University of Colorado yearbook