On May 24, 1911, President William Howard Taft established Colorado National Monument in Mesa County, near Grand Junction. Today the monument, one of eight in Colorado, encompasses more than 20,000 acres of sandstone cliffs and monoliths, scenic canyons,…

Driggs Mansion is a one-story sandstone house in Unaweep Canyon that was built for Laurence Driggs around 1918. Constructed by Grand Junction stonemason Nunzio Grasso and his son, the house later served as a hunting retreat before parts of it were torn…

Although it is on the eastern fringe of the area occupied by a people known to archaeology as the Fremont, Colorado is nevertheless important in the Fremont story, since clues to their origins and end are found there. Additionally, the presence of…

With a population of nearly 60,000, Grand Junction is the largest city on Colorado’s Western Slope. The city takes its name from its location at the junction of the Gunnison and Colorado (formerly the Grand) Rivers, in the heart of the Grand Valley…

The Grand Junction Depot is a two-story Italian Renaissance railroad station built in 1906 to accommodate the city’s growing rail traffic. A downtown landmark, the building serves as a reminder of the important role that railroads—especially the Denver …

The story of irrigation in Colorado’s Grand Valley speaks volumes about the reciprocal relationship between land and community in the arid American West. Early white colonizers of Colorado’s Western Slope espoused concepts of landscape and water control…

Built in 1892 in downtown Grand Junction, Handy Chapel (200 White Ave, Grand Junction, CO 81501) is affiliated with the African Methodist Episcopal Church but is legally owned by the black citizens of the city. In more than 120 years of existence,…

Mesa County is situated on 3,341 square miles of the eastern Colorado Plateau in western Colorado. The county is named for the wide, flat-topped mountains within its borders. The Spanish called such mountains mesas—meaning “tables.” The county’s largest…

Built primarily by New Deal work programs in the 1930s, Rim Rock Drive is a twenty-three-mile scenic road through Colorado National Monument. Connecting Fruita and Grand Junction, the road increased tourism to the monument by allowing travelers to drive…

Saul Halyve was a Hopi distance-running champion raised near Grand Junction who exploded onto the athletic scene in the early 1900s. Although Halyve would never compete in an Olympics due to a multitude of factors, his accomplishments match and possibly…

Located at 226 Pitkin Avenue in Grand Junction, Stranges Grocery is a two-story commercial building that housed one of four Italian groceries in the early twentieth century. Built in 1909 by local stonemason Nunzio Grasso, the grocery was owned and…

At the memorial service for long-time congressman Wayne Aspinall in 1983, Colorado Governor Richard Lamm said, “you can’t take a drink of water in Colorado without remembering Wayne Aspinall.” Wayne Norviel Aspinall (1896–1983) was born in Ohio and…

Willard Frank “Bill” Libby (1908–80) was a native Coloradan who won the Nobel Prize for inventing the radiocarbon dating method. Radiocarbon dating is one of the most commonly used dating techniques by archaeologists and other scientists across the world…