Soon, the valley was home to dozens of apple, pear, apricot, cherry, and peach orchards. A Colorado business directory listed fifty-nine businesses in Grand Junction in 1883.įarmer Elam Blain harvested the Grand Valley’s first fruit crop in 1884, taking advantage of the area’s mild winters and long growing season.
The societal structure was similar to Denver at the time, with many more men than women and most residents in their twenties and thirties. By 1886, Grand Junction had several hundred residents. The town’s first schoolteacher was Nannie Blain, who moved from Cañon City in the early 1880s. Crawford and other founders laid out plans for parks, schools, and local government. The first D&RG train arrived in November 1882. The Randall House, a community building that was likely the town’s first brick structure, went up on the corner of Fifth and Main Streets later that year along with the two-story Mandel Opera House. By January of 1882, Grand Junction had a church, a general store, several local social groups, a newspaper, and a deal to bring the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad (D&RG) into town. The town developed quickly, as hunters, merchants, and developers followed the ranchers and farmers. Three ditches were finished in the city’s first year, kick-starting the local farm and ranch economy. As president of the Grand Junction Town Company, Crawford helped design and build the town’s irrigation ditches, the first of many irrigation projects in the valley. Clayton Nichols, and four other unidentified men-established the City of Grand Junction. On September 26, 1881, not even a month after the Utes had left the area, Civil War veteran and experienced town builder George W. Perhaps sooner than he expected, Mears’s vision for the area would become reality. White settlers quickly moved into the valley, eager to take up the Indians’ former lands under the Homestead Act. Foreseeing a profitable future of road and farm development, Mears convinced the Utes to reject the land as unsuitable for agriculture, and later in 1880 the Utes were forcibly removed to a reservation in Utah. But Otto Mears, a road builder on the Western Slope who got along well with the Utes and went with a Ute delegation to survey the valley, wanted white settlers to move there instead. Although many white Coloradans called for their removal from the state after the Meeker Massacre of 1879, the Utes were initially offered a reservation in the Grand Valley that included the present site of Grand Junction. The valley has historically hosted large populations of game and is generally warmer than the surrounding plateaus and mountains, making it a prime hunting and wintering area for both humans and animals.īy 1400 or so the Grand Valley became the homeland of the Ute, who remained the dominant group until their removal by the US government in 1880. The climate and landscape of the Grand Valley shaped the history of those who lived there, from Paleo-Indians and Ute people to the earliest white settlers and today’s mixed-ancestry population.
#2005 GJ SENTINEL FRONT PAGE PICTURES DRIVERS#
Today, tourism and agriculture are the main drivers of the Grand Junction economy as thousands of outdoor recreation enthusiasts visit the city each year to hike, bike, camp, and raft in the area, as well as tour the Grand Valley’s fruit orchards and wineries. In the mid-twentieth century, the city also served as the processing hub for the Western Slope’s uranium mines. Grand Junction’s rapid early growth was due in large part to the agricultural productivity of surrounding communities, such as Palisade and Fruita, as well as major irrigation projects funded by the federal Bureau of Reclamation. Since its establishment in 1881, the city and its surrounding land have been the site of railroads, factories, orchards, highways, and vineyards. Grand Junction lies near some of the state’s iconic natural features, including Colorado National Monument, Grand Mesa, and the Book Cliffs. 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. With a population of nearly 60,000, Grand Junction is the largest city on Colorado’s Western Slope.
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