“Last month, you heard about the Lakeside Resort, huddled out-of-sight within the ridges between 12th Street and Horizon Drive. Yet, there is another story to be told about the old farmhouse sitting on the hill. This stately structure was there long before Lake Lenore was even thought of. No one knows how long the yellow farmhouse had been there, but according to history it was there when William T. Carpenter purchased the land…”

Read the rest of The Old Yellow Farmhouse Local Lore from the August Beacon Magazine. Thanks Beacon!

We are nearing the end of our quarry work at Mygatt-Moore for the summer, with our last public dig rapidly approaching on August 30th. We have had a few recent finds that we wanted to share!

Friday in the quarry Zander from Longmont, Colorado, found a very nice Diplodocus tooth!

Zander & his tooth

We also are finally ready to remove the large jacket we have been working on all summer that contains a Apatosaurus vertebra and at least 3 (maybe up to 6!) ribs. On Wednesday Dr. Andy Heckert, a visiting paleontologist and professor at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, and Mr. Alan Erickson came by the quarry and helped us to put on the final field jacket, which was reinforced Friday with more plaster. We really appreciate all of the help we have received on the plastering on this giant over the summer! The work on these specimens has taken two years and we are excited to have them heading to the museum.

Volunteers Dale J., Ray B. and Tom S. help curator John Foster to undercut the large jacket.

The large jacket, ready to head to the museum!

Stay tuned for future details regarding this nice large field jacket and its trip to the museum, along with our final discoveries of the summer!

It’s been a FUN-filled couple of days!  More details to follow - enjoy the photos.

A week ago this past Thursday we successfully removed a large sauropod tibia from the quarry! This lower leg bone probably belonged to an Apatosaurus. It was initially discovered by our volunteer Tom S. on July 1st as we worked the quarry with our 5-day Moab dig group. Our 3-day dig group participants worked hard with us on July 8th to get the bone excavated and ready for transportation to the Museum. Luckily for us this bone was relatively easy to excavate, as it was 1100 mm (approximately 3′ 7-1/4″) long and straight. Apatosaurus vertebra are seldom this easy to excavate, and far more common in the quarry. The last time we removed a sauropod limb bone from the quarry was a fibula in 2007. Once we had the bone excavated we applied a field jacket to the bone. These field jackets are composed of burlap strips dipped in plaster and then applied to the bone to form a hard shell that helps us to transport the bone safely back to the lab. After the field jacket had dried the tibia was flipped over onto a tarp. It took 8 trip participants, Museum volunteers and employees to drag the tibia from its former 150 million year old resting place to the awaiting Museum truck for its trip back to the Dinosaur Journey preparation lab!

We were very excited for Tom’s big find, which he has already started to clean. Below are some pictures of his progress, along with pictures from during the excavation process. Keep checking back for tibia updates as work moves forward!

Photos courtesy of Roy & Presli Nelson

Two very different looks for the Avalon Theatre. The Avalon was constructed in 1923 and heavily promoted by Daily Sentinel publisher Walter Walker. From the first performance by soprano singer Lucy Gates, the Avalon became the cultural center of Grand Junction until the 1940s. The Cooper movie theatre chain purchased the building and greatly remodeled the façade. In one of the greatest examples of local historic preservation, the façade was reconstructed in the late 1990s back to its original appearance.

Want to learn more about Grand Junction’s early history?

Join us Friday for our monthly After Hours Tour. This Friday we will be taking a Downtown Walking Tour.

July 16 • 5:30 pm - Tours last 90 minutes.

Meet at: Museum of the West

$5 - no preregistration required

For more information on this and future tours, see our After Hours page here.

Jordan's Inn, Palisade, Colorado

The Palisade Historical Society will hold the inaugural “Palisade Reflections” program on Saturday, July 17 at 9:30 a.m. at the Veteran’s Memorial Community Center in Palisade. Long-time residents Bill Floryancic, Lucille (Phillips) Floryancic, Bill Beckwith, and Ed Maurer, Shirley (Rowley) Maurer will share their knowledge and memories to create a detailed map showing the locations of businesses, historic homes and other interesting places in the Palisade area.

“Informally, we’ve been calling this program retail archaeology,” explained Palisade Historical Society Director John Galloway, AIA, who is also principal of Wagner/Galloway Architects, LLC, with offices in Palisade. Galloway is creating maps of the Palisade area for the program to facilitate discussion and accurately record where businesses, historic homes, and other places of interest have been located over the years.

The program is the first in a series designed to collect historic information and memories about Palisade. “We welcome people who are interested in learning more about their community and want to keep history alive in Palisade,” he continued.

The Maurers, Bill Beckwith, and Lucille grew up in Palisade. Bill Floryancic is a long time resident and has initiated several projects to capture Palisade’s history, including the Walking Tour and displays of historic photos in the Wine Country Inn. Bill Beckwith is also Treasurer of the Palisade Historical Society.

Another special guest at the July 17^th program is Bill Floryancic’s grandson, Kirk Bunte, who wrote “A History of Rapid Creek” while attending Mesa College. Kirk is an advisory consultant for higher education software and employed by Sungard Higher Education. He currently lives with his family in Exton, PA.

Breakfast pastries, compliments of Mary Lincoln’s world famous Slice O’ Life Bakery, 105 West 3^rd Street in Palisade (where the Elberta Theater was formerly located) will be provided.

www.historicpalisade.org

ABOUT THE PALISADE HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The Palisade Historical Society evolved from a sub-committee of the Palisade Chamber of Commerce, was incorporated as a non-profit organization in March, and recently filed an application for Federal tax-exempt status. The mission of the Palisade Historical Society is to collect, preserve, and communicate the unique history of Palisade, Colorado, and to foster, encourage, stimulate, and develop public appreciation of this history.

Everyone in the community is invited to join the Palisade Historical Society-through volunteer time with committees and projects, including the Oral History Program, Fundraising, Programs, and the booth at Peach Fest-and annual membership, which starts at $25.00. Donations are encouraged to help underwrite the costs of planned projects including, identifying and inventorying historical items, creating interpretive signs, getting the Palisade Tribune digitized for the Colorado Historic Newspapers project, and finding a secure, climate-controlled storage for the collection. The Palisade Historical Society is partnering with the Western Colorado Interpretive Association so donors can receive a tax-deduction by making checks payable to the WCIA, writing Palisade Historical Society on the check, and mailing it to P.O. Box 631, Palisade, CO   81526.

In addition to John Galloway and Bill Beckwith, other Directors of the Palisade Historical Society include Doris Butler, Richard Mathews, Harry Talbott, and Priscilla Walker.

The 5-day expedition to Moab was a great success this year, with 12 participants traveling from Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Wisconsin, New Mexico, and California! Below is a short recap of our trip:

Day 1 (June 28, 2010): We met with participants at the hotel to have dinner and discuss the trip’s structure. We went over some of the local geology they would be seeing, fossils they might find and/or see on the trip, and the schedule for the week.

Dig participants learn the local geology

Day 2 (June 29, 2010): Our first day on the road we drove down from Grand Junction to Moab along Highway 128. We stopped to become better acquainted with the local geology of the area. We then headed south into the La Sal Mountains to visit a dinosaur track site in the Entrada Formation at Fisher Mesa. From there the group traveled to Dead Horse Point State Park for lunch before taking a nice afternoon drive through Arches National Park to wrap up the day.

Dinosaur track in the Entrada Sandstone

Trip participants and Dr. John Foster observing tracks at Fisher Mesa

Fisher Mesa dinosaur track

Participants and Dr. John Foster at Fisher Mesa dinosaur track site

Day 3 (June 30, 2010): Our second day was filled with prospecting in the Triassic Chinle Formation. Several of the group participants, including Sarah, Michelle, and Patrice found teeth belonging to phytosaurs and rauisuchians.

Introduction to prospecting in the Triassic Chinle Formation

Prospecting in the Triassic Chinle Formation

Phytosaur tooth from the Chinle Formation

We also toured the Poison Spider dinosaur track site and had a chance to view the petroglyphs that have been left on the Navajo Sandstone at this site.

Visiting a track slab at Poison Spider

Dr. John Foster pointing out more tracks in the Navajo Sandstone

Dinosaur track at Poison Spider

Petroglyphs at Poison Spider

Participants checking out the petroglyph

Afterwards we drove to the Mill Canyon area north of Moab to walk a trail that the BLM maintains where fossil bones and wood are preserved in the Jurassic Morrison Formation.

On the Mill Canyon Trail, observing sandstones

Day 4 (July 1, 2010): Today we drove to the Mygatt-Moore Dinosaur Quarry in western Colorado. We spent the day digging for the fossilized remains of Late Jurassic dinosaurs. We found a new limb bone in the quarry today along with several pieces of fragmentary dinosaur bone. Another interesting find was a small, well preserved twig found by Barbara and what appears to be a cycad stalk found by Tom. The cycad was safely wrapped in a protective jacket of plastered bandages for its trip back to the museum.

Working at Mygatt-Moore

Exposing a new bone in the quarry

Preparing the cycad for its trip back to the museum

After we finished up at the quarry and headed back towards Moab, we made a stop at Sego Canyon near the town of Thompson Springs to see the petroglyphs and pictographs that can be seen in the Book Cliffs.

Sego Canyon rock art

Jay contemplating the rock art

Day 5 (July 2, 2010): On our last day together we woke up early for a morning float on the Colorado River through the Professor Valley. It was a beautiful morning and the weather was perfect for enjoying the river and even a splash or two. Afterwards we returned to Moab for lunch before heading back to the Dinosaur Journey Museum in Fruita for our tour of the lab and collections room, as well as a chance to see the entire museum. We finished off the evening dining together at a local Mexican restaurant, where we reminisced on the week’s events and how quickly it passed.

It was a really great week with everyone and we hope that everyone had as much fun as we did!

“There is a quaint, yet quiet community huddled within the northern part of Grand Junction, resting on the ridges between Twelfth Street and Horizon Drive. The name of this wonderful community is Lakeside. This beautiful neighborhood was the dream of William Thomas Carpenter, the founder of the Little Book Cliff Railroad, and the man that made the Book Cliff Mine a success.

Carpenter had hoped to make Poland Springs, the resort he built just below the Book Cliff Mine, the most popular hot spot in the valley. Consequently, due to the Great Silver Crash of 1893, all of the mining industry of Colorado was affected in 1894. Many mining camps were forced to close
or slowed down immensely. The Poland Springs hardly supplied enough water for a lush lake and parkland, as Carpenter had desired. Thus, his plans shifted toward the Grand Junction area…”

Read the rest of Lakeside Local Lore from the July Beacon Magazine.  Thanks Beacon!

“Leadville is a special place…a treasure…a gem in the middle of Colorado. Located within easy driving distance from Denver and Colorado Springs, along the Top of the Rockies Scenic and Historic Byway, Leadville is a legendary frontier mining town with seventy square blocks of Victorian architecture, an adjacent 20 square miles of mining district, and history galore.” See more about Leadville here.

Leadville boasts of being the highest incorporated city in North America. It’s high, alright - 10,430′ above sea level. And we’ll be exploring this historic gem, breathing in that high mountain air. Awesome.

Here are a few places will be checking out:

Tabor Opera House

Leadville, Colorado & Southern Railroad

National Mining Hall of Fame

Come along as we explore Leadville! Go to our Passport to Adventure for more information on this really cool trip!

“In the late 1800s, when coal and wood were used primarily for heat and when a ride on the local trolley was 25 cents, a great discovery was about to unfold in the Grand Valley.

George W. Smith, a newcomer to the valley, was hiking the rugged terrain of the Book Cliffs, when he came upon a large coal vein.

Within a few weeks, Smith had begun his venture of digging deep into the Book Cliffs to extract the rich, bituminous coal. He and his partners worked hard for several years, but could not produce or transport enough coal to supply heat for the residents of the valley. He had been hauling the coal by wagon, and that just wasn’t fast enough for the growing Grand Junction area…”

Read more about the Little Bookcliff Railroad here. Thanks to the Beacon and author Sandy Barney for sharing “Local Lore” with us.