Grand Junction, CO: Colorado Wine Country and a Top 100 Cool US City

Mt Garfield near Grand Junction, Colorado

The City of Grand Junction is the largest city in western Colorado. It is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat and the most populous town or city of Mesa County, Colorado, United States. Grand Junction is situated 247 miles (398 km) west-southwest of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver. According to 2006 Census Bureau estimates, the population of the city is 45,299. Grand Junction is the 15th most populous city in the State of Colorado and the most populous city on the Colorado Western Slope. Grand Junction serves as a major commercial and transportation hub within the large area between the Green River and the Continental Divide. It is the principal city of the Grand Junction Metropolitan Statistical Area which had a population of 139,137 in 2007.

The city is located along the north side of the Colorado River, where it receives the Gunnison River from south. The name "Grand" refers to the historical name of the upper Colorado River until renamed in 1921, and the word 'junction' is from the joining of the Colorado and Gunnison rivers. The city sits near the mid-point of a 30-mile (48 km) arcing valley, known as the Grand Valley, a major fruit-growing region, historically home to the Ute people and settled by white farmers in the 1880s. In recent years, several wineries have been established in the area as well. The Colorado National Monument, a series of canyons and mesas similar to the Grand Canyon overlook the city, while most of the area is surrounded by public lands managed by the Bureau of Land Management. Interstate 70 connects the city eastward to Glenwood SpringsInterstate 15. and Denver and westward to Green River, UT and

Since settlers arrived in the 1880s until the 1960s, the main economic activity in the region was farming and cattle. Vast oil shale reserves were known to exist near Parachute, Colorado in the Piceance Basin. The oil embargoes of the 1970s and high gas prices resulted in major financial interest in the region. Exxon purchased rights and used Grand Junction as its seat of operations.

Grand Junction and the surrounding Grand Valley were prosperous in the 1970s and early 1980s largely because of oil shale. The United States, western Colorado in particular, has the largest known concentration of oil shale in the world, (according to the Bureau of Land Management) and holds an estimated 800 gigabarrels of recoverable oil, enough to meet U.S. demand for oil at current levels for 110 years. Known as the "Rock That Burns" the shale can be mined and processed to produce oil, although in the past it was significantly more expensive than conventional oil. Sustained prices above $95 per barrel, however, may make extraction economically attractive in the coming years. ExxonMobil was forced to pull out of the region because of lower oil prices, which led to economic hardship in the region.

The economic bust, known as "Black Sunday" (May 2, 1982) to the locals, started with a phone call from the President of Exxon to the then Governor of Colorado, Richard Douglas Lamm, stating that Exxon would cut its losses while retaining mining rights to the (then and currently) uneconomic oil. The economic bust was felt state wide, as Exxon had invested more than 5 billion USD in the state. Colorado historian Tom Noel observed "I think that was a definite turning point, and it was a reminder that we were a boom-and-bust state...There were parallels to the silver crash of 1893."

Today the economy of Grand Junction is more diverse and stable than it has been in the last 40 years. Currently, major contributors are health care, tourism, agriculture, livestock, and energy mining (gas and oil). Major oil companies have once again invested large amounts of money recently (within the last two years), due to recent increases in oil and natural gas prices.

Grand Junction is being discovered by the "nation's elite business and leisure travelers," according to Cleveland-based Flight Options, a private jet service that named Grand Junction as one of its clients' top ten destinations during December 2007, citing nearby Powderhorn Resort as an attraction.

To the northeast, the weathered Little Bookcliffs cut across the skyline. Southeast soars the Grand Mesa, the world's largest flat-topped mountain. The photogenic canyons and monoliths of the Colorado National Monument form a western wall. In between the three natural barriers sprawls Western Colorado's Grand Valley. Cut out of the rugged terrain by the Colorado and Gunnison rivers, the valley was also one of the last locales in the lower 48 states to be settled by pioneer Americans.

The region's colorful history stretches much further back in time. A little-known aboriginal civilization known as the Fremont first moved into the area about 200 A.D. Living in pit-houses, eating insects, small animals and sparse produce from tiny gardens, the mysterious Fremont left Western Colorado about 1300 A.D. Roughly 100 years later, the first bands of wandering Utes moved into the region. The various Ute tribes eventually called much of Colorado and Utah home until forced onto reservations in 1881. Both Indian groups left behind numerous examples of colorful rock paintings and canyon carvings. Some of the unexplained rock art can still be spotted today.

Until 1821, the Grand Valley was part of the kingdom of Spain. And during the early and mid 1700's, hardy Spanish and Mexican soldiers, explorers and priests poked and prodded through the region. Some were looking for gold, others seeking new trails to Spanish California. Most were not too successful.

At first, trail-blazing American mountain men weren't very successful either. Hoping to trap valuable beaver or trade with Ute Indians, most of the Americans were kept out of the territory by jealous Spanish officials. However, when Western Colorado became part of Mexico in 1821, the mountains were suddenly wide open to trappers, traders and wandering buck-skinners for the U.S.

A few of the same mountain men to first see Colorado's Western Slope later helped guide U.S. Army expeditions and Government Surveying parties through the region. Some of the Old West's best known explorers - Kit Carson, John Charles Fremont and Capt. John Gunnison - all passed through the Grand Valley in the 1840's and 1850's.

In spite of anti-Indian politicians, a large part of Western Colorado remained Ute Indian Territory until September 1881. The region was opened to homesteaders, ranchers and town builders the very day the Utes were being forced out by Army troopers. By the time Kansas politician and real estate developer George Crawford decided the unclaimed Grand Valley would make a good town site, Denver, Colorado already had a population of 50,000. And Grand Junction, Colorado was just being born! (wikipedia)

Estes Park, CO: William Clyde Currence and the Legend of the Blue Mist

This is the story of an old Hermit who lived in the Estes Park, Colorado area around the turn of the century that people called "Miner Bill". Bill's real name was William Clyde Currence and he came to the Estes Park area from Trenton, Nebraska in 1883. Whether Bill was insane, eccentric or both most remember him as a person whose life was shrouded in mystery.

Miner Bill's sanity was questioned around December of 1904 when acquaintances took him to the Montezuma County jail after he became uncontrollable. A doctor examined Bill and stated that of all the insane people he had seen in his life, that Bill was the worst that he had ever be exposed to. The doctor ordered that Bill be bound hand and foot. At a commitment hearing later in the month people who knew Bill told of how he would talk of wild things. That most of Bill's conversation would be on astrology and about Divine things......

After about a years confinement in the Colorado State Insane Asylum Bill was released and immediately set to prospecting in the Horseshoe Park area of what is now Rocky Mountain National Park. After several months Bill filed two claims on the West side of Mount Chapin just north of a rock formation now known as Miner Bill's Spire. Local geologists thought that Bill was wasting his time, since they themselves had collected rock samples from the base to the summit of Mount Chapin and had not found any traces of gold or silver.

Heedless of these criticisms, Miner Bill began construction of a trail to access the upper mines. Some might say that it was the product of a deranged mind fixating on a singular task. Non-the-less, great care was taken in building a well planned and skillfully engineered trail. The trail was so well constructed that it has lasted to the year I am telling this tale to you. Certainly, much more time and effort were expended than was warranted to reach the presumably worthless mines.

With the formation of Rocky Mountain National Park in 1915 Miner Bill became embroiled in a dispute with the Federal Government. It seems that the Superintendent of RMNP stopped by Bill's mine and asked him to quit cutting trees. Then construction of Fall River road caused Bill to complain that the road interfered with his mining claim. The people Bill complained to told him that the road would benefit his claim not hinder it. Well, Bill did not agree with this so he strung up a barbed wire fence across the road. He was arrested but released after promising not to put up the fence again. Bill continued to fan the flames of the situation by cutting more trees, building an additional cabin and erecting new fences. Bill continued to live in his cabins, which he named "Snowshoe" and "Hackmandy" until about 1930 when he was forced off the mining claim and into Estes Park by an attorney of the United States.

Well, the Town of Estes Park wasn't very comfortable with Miner Bill actually in Town all the time. Bill had the habit of talking to himself in public which frightened many people; a habit that many people who are merely lonely have developed. Bill lived in peoples barns and in make shift lean-tos in the colder weather. The owner of the Stanley Hotel, F.O. Stanley who was also the inventor of the Stanley Steamer automobile gave Miner Bill odd jobs to do on occasion to give Bill some spending money.

What bothered people the most was when Bill started talking of "Divine things", especially his personal fear of what Bill referred to as the "Blue Mist". According to Bill, on cloudy nights near his cabin a Being that manifested itself as a glowing Blue Mist would appear in the trees near his cabins on the side of Mount Chapin. This Being would leave three toed claw marks in the snow and on the trunks of the trees around the cabins. Animals were found dead with nothing left but fresh bones on the ground. Bill believed that there was some relationship to his discovery of Rhyolite crystals while digging for gold and silver. He thought that by uncovering the crystals he had released something that had been trapped in the crystals while they were covered with earth.

One day the citizens of Estes Park noticed that Bill had not been around Town for over a week. "Probably gone back to his cabins on the side of Mount Chapin" they said. Even though they were uncomfortable with Miner Bill around they were curious as to what had become of him. Speculation and gossip turned to action and a retired Army officer by the name of Louis O' Riordan took the bull by the horns and went out to Bill's cabins to see what had happened.

O' Riordan came back a day later and told the Town that he had found Bill and his dog dead near the front of the cabin he called "Snowshoe". All that was left of the two of them were the bones held together by fragments of ligament and sinew. Around Bill were tracks of some kind of animal with three toes still visible in the snow.

Most people who come to Rocky Mountain National Park do not know about William Clyde Currence and the Legend of the Blue Mist. And most of those who learn of the tale do not bother to make the arduous hike up the trail that Miner Bill constructed to his mine and cabins. But some of the travelers to the area want to know more about this mysterious man and what he might have seen on the slopes of Mount Chapin. Perhaps you the reader will make the hike up to Miner Bill's Spire and Bill's old cabins and mines some day. And perhaps you will come back to Town and talk of Astrology......and Divine things......and Blue Mists.......

Copyright (c) 1995 By Arthur Vyn Boennighausen