In 1941, Colorado governor Ralph L. Carr and the Colorado State Planning Commission sponsored the Colorado Writers’ Project under the federal Work Projects Administration. In Colorado: American Guide Series, the development of Grand Junction was described:
This region was little known to White men until the latter part of the nineteenth century. Fur traders and trappers who overran the rest of the State rarely passed this way, for the arid desert country offered them little and the Ute tribes here were consistently hostile. In 1842 the missionary Marcus Whitman crossed the site on his journey from Oregon, proceeding up the Gunnison to Cochetopa Pass.
For many years the Grand Valley was part of the Northern Ute Reservation. In 1880 the Indians surrendered their claims and the next year were removed forcibly to Utah so that the valley might be opened to settlement. Land-hungry settlers poured in so quickly when the opening gun was fired on September 4, 1881, that they caught sight of the rear guard of the retreating Ute. A party of five men from Gunnison, headed by George A. Crawford, ex-governor of Kansas and frontier capitalists and speculator with a reputation for establishing a new town ‘every decade or so,’ staked a townsite here. The settlement was first called Ute, then West Denver, and was finally named for its site at the junction of the Gunnison and the Colorado (formerly the Grand) Rivers.
Settlement of the valley was rapid, although the first arrivals looked upon the land as being chiefly valuable for pasturing cattle. For some weeks there was fear of a return of the Ute; Grand Junction was incorporated in December 1881, in which month a store and a saloon were built, and a ditch company was organized to supply water. Early in 1882 the townsite was surveyed and platted on an elaborate scale, with provision for four public parks; a post office was established, and a school was opened.
The first election took place in 1882 when the district was still a part of Gunnison County. It was a school election, with two tickets in the field, one list of candidates being married men, the other single. The bachelors won by an overwhelming majority, due to the influence of the wives of the opposition who held, so it was rumored, that ‘a married man had no business fooling away his time with school marms.’
The first teacher was Nannie Blain, of Illinois, whose father was one of the first settlers in the valley and is credited with having planted the first fruit trees, thus laying the foundation of one of the largest enterprises in the State. She was soon a prominent figure in the community, organizing the first Sunday School, conducting the first funeral service before there was a cemetery; the deceased was laid away in a shallow grave in the desert. Sunday School services in early Grand Junction typified the attitude of the pioneer toward religion. Promptly at two o’clock on Sunday afternoons, all places of business closed and the entire population, from unregenerate old soak to the staid business man, repaired to the log schoolhouse to hear ‘Miss Nannie’ read the Scriptures. After the service, shops and saloons were quickly reopened, and the town resumed the even and uneven tenor of its ways.
Building operations progressed rapidly. The Grand Junction House, the first hotel, was built in January 1882, and soon had a number of rivals. The most noteworthy were two hostelries that bore the startling names of The Pig’s Ear and The Pig’s Eye. By the end of the year the population of the town totaled almost 900; there were several general stores, a drug store, two blacksmith shops, five hotels and restaurants, a meat market, and twelve saloons. The predominance of bar-rooms was typical of all Western cattle towns, and Grand Junction was no less rowdy in its youth than similar settlements. Cowboys from the upper ranges regularly shot up the town on pay days, and respectable citizens bewailed the want of law and order.
Extension of the narrow-gauge Denver & Rio Grande line from Gunnison in 1882 gave the town its first rail outlet and did much to stimulate growth. In 1883 Mesa County was created from part of Gunnison County, and Grand Junction was made the county seat. A company was soon organized to construct a toll road up the Colorado River; after considerable difficulty due to lack of funds, the project was completed and two stage lines began operating to Glenwood Springs.
In 1886 the Teller Institute and Indian School was established here. The citizens of Grand Junction donated 160 acres just east of town, and the Federal Government appropriated $23,000 for buildings. In addition to regular scholastic instruction, practical trades were taught the students, who were the same Ute who had been driven from the valley five years before. Later enrollment included many students from other tribes in Utah and Wyoming; the school was highly successful, continuing until 1911, when Indian education was concentrated at the Ute Reservation. The school was then deeded to the State as a home for mental defectives.
Grand Junction boomed with the coming of the main line of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad in 1887; subsequent irrigation developments transformed the fertile valley into one of the richest agricultural areas in the State and forced cattlemen to retreat to the mesa tops and the more remote valleys.
Primarily a railroad and manufacturing city, Grand Junction resembles a typical smaller industrial community of the East. The Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad shops here are the largest on the Western Slope and have the largest annual payroll in the city. Most industrial activity depends upon the surrounding agricultural area and cattle ranges. A flour mill, a sugar refinery, fruit and vegetable packing and canning concerns, meat packing plants, and dairy products firms are among the chief industrial enterprises here; there are also a brick factory, a marble and granite works, and several large storage warehouses for fruit and vegetables; the Denver & Rio Grande maintains stockyards here. The city has more than 180 wholesale produce firms doing an annual business of over $28,000,000.
Grand Junction has enjoyed a large measure of stability because of its diversified income. Besides being the jobbing and retail center of an area of 50,000 square miles, and a railroad and a local manufacturing town, the city has offices of numerous Federal agencies, including those of the Forest Service, Reclamation Service, and Weather Bureau; it is headquarters for twenty-five C. C. C. (Civilian Conservation Corps) camps. The population is predominantly of northern and central European stock, but a small percentage are of Italian and Spanish origin.
Its streets are broad and paved; many have center parkways. The majority of the business buildings are old; a striking feature of the residential district is the predominance of frame houses, for the majority of dwellings in other Colorado cities are of brick and stone. The water system is municipally owned; the supply is drawn from Kannah Creek, a mountain stream rising on Grand Mesa, where storage reservoirs have been constructed.