People
Collection for person entities.
Pages
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- Cordelia Evelyn (Hamilton) Files
- She was born in Miami, Ohio to Samuel J. Hamilton and Martha Evelyn (Newberry) Hamilton. Her father was a house painter and wallpaper hanger. Her mother was a homemaker. Cordelia was a sibling to Margaret, Robert, Jeanette, Margaret, Martha, Harvey, Margery, and William Hamilton. Her paternal half-sibling was Edna Hamilton. The family moved to Fruita, Colorado in 1904, when Cordelia was about four years old. Cordelia’s parents and maternal grandparents had lived there in the 1880’s, when they homesteaded near the newly completed Grand Valley Canal. Cordelia attended Fruita Central School beginning in 1906. She graduated near the top of her class from Fruita Union High School in 1918. After a period of time studying the bible and trying different churches, she joined the Fruita Congregational Church in 1915. While in school, she helped her mother with laundry work that she took in from other families. This extra work allowed Cordelia and her siblings to take piano lessons. She worked as a janitor, a teacher, a babysitter, and in a canning factory. She also worked in the summer for cattleman Jay Nearing’s summer operation near De Beque. She took a teacher’s training course at Western State College in 1918, received her license, and taught at the Hunter School from 1918 to 1919. With obligations at home, she could never save enough money to continue her education, though she did attend Western State College for a time. She taught school at the Hunter School from 1918 to 1919 and at the Collbran School in 1919-20. Suffering from severe arthritis, she was placed in Clark’s Mineral Wells Sanitorium in Pueblo for treatment. While there, she survived the Great Pueblo Flood of 1921 that destroyed much of the city. After recovering her health, she moved to Glade Park in 1924. She taught at the Pipeline School and then the Sleeper School from 1923 to 1935. She married Loyd Files, a Glade Park homesteader, on April 26, 1924 in Fruita. He was a farmer and heavy equipment operator. Prior to the Great Depression, she and Loyd purchased land and cattle from homesteaders and dry land farmers who wanted to leave the area. In this way, they accumulated about 3,000 acres and 35 head of cattle. In 1938, with economic conditions and Dust Bowl conditions on Glade Park making profitable farming impossible, they moved to Fruitvale. In 1940, they traded their land with the owner of acreage along North Avenue in the Fairmount area. They lived on acreage at 2022 North Avenue, where they owned a salvage yard (now the location of a Wendy’s restaurant across from the VA Hospital). They lived at first in a shack and then in a small, two-bedroom house that Loyd built. Their children attended the Lincoln Park School. Cordelia did the bookkeeping for the business, which became successful. When their land on Glade Park sold in 1945, they purchased the 160 acres between North and Grand Avenues, and between 23rd Street and 28 ½ Road from George Marron. They developed this land over several years. They established the Starlight Drive-in, Grand Junction’s first drive-in movie theater, in 1947, where Teller Arms shopping center now sits. They also built baseball fields for Grand Mesa Little League behind the Armory on 28 Road and the Mesa Gardens subdivision behind Teller Arms. They were the main force behind the building of Teller Arms itself, then the first strip mall between Denver and Salt Lake City. They built a new home on the 160 acres, and built 23rd Street so that it would connect from North Avenue to the home, into which they moved in 1952. She and Loyd were baptized into the Mormon Church on February 27, 1960. She was the president of the Relief Society in the church. She took in and cared for many strangers and loved ones over the years. Hilltop Rehabilitation Hospital’s The Files Center-Day Facility, a place where elderly people and preschool age children could meet, was named for she and Loyd.
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- Cordero Marez
- Member of the bands Valley Curse and crêpe girl.
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- Cori Howard
- A volunteer with the Mesa County Oral History Project.
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- Corky Perry
- A volunteer with the Mesa County Oral History Project.
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- Cornelia Ann (Robinson) Willits
- She moved from Texas to Ashcroft, Colorado in a covered wagon with her husband Lee Willits, Jr. in the late 1800's. Grandmother of Dudley W. Mitchell.