Why “A People’s History of the Grand Valley”

This project really began in 2006, I was writing for the short live radical paper, “The Red Pill.” Grand Junction was celebrating its 125 year anniversary. A flurry of history articles and even a book were released, these histories all suffered from being myopically white. Most of these histories fell into the trap of glorifying the story of ‘great men’ over the story of the people.

I penned a “125 years of Dissent” article, and in my research I found that there was a richer radical and progressive history than I ever thought possible. From populist of the 1880’s and 1890’s to Dalton Trumbo to the modern struggles for peace and justice and ultimately a better world, Grand Junction residents have agitated, organized, and fought for change since the very first days.

I wrote a number of other history articles in my time at, The Red Pill, that started to fill in the skeleton of a story outlined in “125 Years of Dissent.” I wrote an article about a local Vietnam war resister, Timothy Burns, and an article about the ‘Yippie’ Smoke-In, that ended in mass arrests and tear gas. I also wrote about Walter Walker and the KKK, and Uranium’s continuing radioactive local legacy. For 14 years, the idea for an alternative narrative to Grand Valley history has lurked in the back of my mind.

In the spring of 2020, the nation was rocked by widespread protests in response to the police murder of George Floyd. Grand Junction, participated in the movement, with the largest leftist/progressive/radical protest ever seen by the city. One of the early events was a teach-in. I got a call from, organizer Laurel Carpenter, they needed someone to speak to a racist history of the Grand Valley. I got the call around 10:30am, the event was at 12:30pm. In those two hours of hurried research, I could see there was so much more to explore. Starting with stealing the Ute’s land, to the Teller Indian School, through the police murder of African American George Lewis in 1883. Racism and hate permeate the history of the Grand Valley, and its not an accident that it hasn’t been written about at length.

The unrest and protest of the spring of 2020 illustrated the need for a different narrative. A story of ourselves and our struggles. As a straight white-male, and I am the first to admit that I am ill equipped to tell ‘our’ history. My hope is that this is the first of many attempts to re-frame the history of the Grand Valley, and the west.

History and social movements are a lot like geology. As I type these words, I am in a camper in Rabbit Valley overlooking the Colorado River. The entrata sandstone layer sits above the per-Cambrian schists and gneisses, the age difference between the two layers is around a billion years, meaning a billion years of geologic history is unknown. The Great Nonconformity. This mirrors the pre-settler history, in which millennia passed without records. The various layers of the Morrison formation sit above the entrata layer. Similarly, today’s social and political movements are built upon the gains and networks of the movements that preceded it.

In the early 2000’s, I was a young college student, and began organizing against the disastrous war in Iraq. We thought our radical rhetoric and actions were something new, something this town had never seen. The hubris of youth. As I research, I realize that my activism, comrades, and our fights for justice, were just another layer of sandstone being laid down on the edge of the Colorado plateau.

This project is dedicated to the Ute tribe, upon their stolen homeland this story takes place. This book would like to thank all the dreamers, poets, activist, escapees, organizers, war-resisters, writers, sex-workers, socialists, progressives, outlaws, laborers, populist, suffragettes, coxeyites, environmentalist, pacifists, abortionists, immigrants, rebels, strikers, and the everyday people that wrote this history, with their blood sweat and tears. Thank you.