Cleaola Ernst talks about moving to Colorado from Kansas on a narrow-gauge train in 1897, when she was five years old. She speaks about her nursing education and working as a nurse. She remembers her family’s life in Hotchkiss, Colorado, and the general store that her parents ran. She tells the story of an eagle that purportedly picked up a small girl near Norwood, and how her family came to be in possession of the eagle after it was shot. She remembers a Chinese-American man who had come to do work in Hotchkiss, how as a school girl she tried to protect him from cowboys who were angry that someone of his ethnicity was in town, and how the man was ultimately lynched. She recalls games and dances at school, a baseball game where she was knocked out by a wayward pitch, and a prank where cowboys put cows upstairs in the high school. She talks about packing apples and peaches and working for a dressmaker. She speaks about homesteading in Montana with her first husband, and about writing the book, “Homesteading in Montana.” The interview was conducted by the Mesa County Oral History Project, a collaboration of Mesa County Libraries and the Museums of Western Colorado.
