It is Sometimes More About the Journey

“That was so f@%$ing Scooby-Doo,” I said to no one in particular. I had just gotten off the phone with a local woman who back in the 1980’s wrote a senior history thesis based around two long interviews with members of Grand Junction’s long-standing Black community. The night before a friend had sent me a screenshot of a page of this manuscript. It was content perfect for what we are trying to do here at the People’s History of the Grand Valley. I messaged for more info and all I got was a title page and an author name. “A Social Reflection: Grand Junction’s Black Community 1880-1965” So, the hunt was on. A quick search on Facebook, turned up nothing, Google had an inactive Linkedin.com profile. Nothing in the phonebook (some people really do still have landlines). Nothing in the reference directory at the local library branch (did you know they have cell phone directory there?). A search through newspapers.com and I found an article in the Daily Sentinel by Priscilla Belle Mangnall. I am on the board of the Mesa County Historical Society with her! A quick message and she lined me out. The women had changed her name back to her family name. I found her work number and left a message. A few minutes later she called back.

“I can’t believe anyone has even heard of my paper, it wasn’t ever published,” she said. She agreed to dig for it. “I know it’s in a red folder.” It is only a matter of time before we can add that source–that voice–to the multitudes from our past.

Almost a year ago when I was first digging in the Grand Junction’s hidden history, I found classified ads from the early 1980s for a “Gay and Lesbian Support Group” in the Daily Sentinel. In 1984, The Daily Sentinel published an article about hate-crimes against the local LGBTQ community, they profiled activists with the GLSG. In passing the article references the groups newsletter “The Paragon.”

For over a year I have been looking for copies of the Paragon. I posted on FB groups, poured thru archive catalogs. Asked local activists and historians if they knew of anyone involved in the GLSG or if copies of the “Paragon” existed. A few weeks back while at the Colorado Historical Societies Archives in Denver I finally found three copies of The Paragon. The early LGBTQ movement in Grand Junction began to come into focus. Following the names associated with the Paragon led me to interview Patrick Miles, who has been out since he moved to GJ in 1973–with his husband.

Nothing beats that thrill of discovery. Weather you figure it out in a morning or if it takes a year.

Of course, none of the sources are really discoveries. Legions of librarians, archivist, and genealogist have spent countless hours putting old papers on microfiche (and now digitalize). They have cataloged, preserved, organized and made legible whole collections of documents. Thank you to all the archivist, volunteers, and librarians known and unknown that have helped make our history more accessible.

Even the folks I interview. It feels like discovery but it’s not. They, very much, already know about what I am discovering, from their stories. Even when individuals share private documents, I am in their debt. Had they thrown it away–not seen its value–it would be lost.

Sometimes, not solving the mystery de jour is okay too, like this photo from the Denver Public Libraries Western History Collection. It shows a couple dozen black soldiers marching under U.S Army Banners. The photo is labeled 1883, and states that those marching are the “Grand Valley Guards,” our frontier militia. So much didn’t seem right about the photo, I posted it in a private Facebook group of historians, archaeologist, reporters, writers and history buffs.

The amazing Steve Haight, of the Historical Photos of Fruita and Western Colorado Facebook page, replied:

“The photograph is definitely mis-dated and mislabeled. But it was taken in Grand Junction, at the intersection of Main Street and Fifth Street, from the rooftop of the first building west of the Grand Valley National Bank (both of which sat where the Dalby Wendland building is today). The photographer was facing southeast, and the parade is moving west on Main.

But the dating is off by at least a dozen years (I believe this photo had to have been taken no earlier than 1895), and those men are not the Grand Valley Guard. The Grand Valley National bank building was built at the end of 1890, and the building this photo was taken from was built sometime shortly after it. The narrow-gauge rail lines down the center of the street would have been for Barney Kennedy’s horse-drawn streetcar, which didn’t begin operation until September 10, 1890. But even then the tracks were still incomplete, and the 2 ½ miles of track Kennedy had been contracted by the city to operate were not finished until late 1892 or early 1893. You can zoom in to see the small turntable for the streetcar dead center at the intersection of Fifth and Main. Tracks run south down Fifth (but not north since the route didn’t go that way) and lead to the horse barn.

The ladies in the photo are wearing white shirtwaists and separate dark skirts. This style was popular from the mid-1890s until about WWI. But most of the shirtwaists also have the puffy-shouldered gigot sleeves, AKA leg-of-mutton sleeves, that were in fashion on dresses throughout the 1890s and into the first five or so years on the 20th century.

The bicycles are all diamond-framed safety bicycles with pneumatic tires. Bikes with this type of frame were not invented until 1889, and pneumatic bicycle tires were invented in 1888. The details aren’t clear, even zoomed in, but none that I can see have hand-operated spoon brakes or roller brakes, suggesting they might use coaster brakes instead, a device invented in 1898.

The military unit is definitely a Black U.S. Army Cavalry unit, not the Grand Valley Guards. They are wearing the standard four-button sack coat and Model-1895 forage caps, which as the designation indicates were issued starting in 1895. — Steve–”

Thru numerous searches in historic newspapers we have still yet to find anything about the “buffalo soldiers” marching thru early Grand Junction’s streets. The search continues. That is the fun of it. That is the process. I didn’t know what I expected when I started this, but it continues to be a collaborative process at its core. Steve’s response was mind blowing to me. How does he know so much? I am in his and many other historians’ debt.

After our write-up of “Grand Junction and the Golden Age a Vagrancy,” a gentleman reached-out. His father was the railroad’s special agent or ‘Bull,’ from the 1930s-1970s. He shared a letter from a tramp to his father. His father, Frank Jonick, had helped this tramp out with a few dollars and a nod and a wink on which train to take out of town. The tramp back in Texas had begun getting his life back in order and was forever grateful to Frank for the grace shown him. It’s not an exciting source for content, but it is important because tramps and hobos and other marginalized folks didn’t leave much written in their own hand, it’s always sources about hobos not by hobos.

I in turn, clipped a large four page special in The Daily Sentinel about Frank’s career on the railroads and sent them along to his son. “I had not seen the article previously, Thanks for sharing it!” he replied.

Our history is our story, its more than a pile of dates and names, it is the story of ourselves, it can’t be written by one person, but by all of us. Thanks for sharing your stories, ideas, leads, and documents. I look forward to hearing more stories from more of you in the near future.