Grand Junction

Grand Junction is a home rule municipality and the county seat of Mesa County, situated in the heart of the Grand Valley along the Colorado River at its confluence with the Gunnison River. It is the largest city in Mesa County and recorded a population of 65,560 at the 2020 United States Census, making it the most populous city in western Colorado and the 17th most populous Colorado municipality overall. Grand Junction comprises the largest urban center between Denver and Salt Lake City, as well as the only metropolitan area in Colorado outside of the Front Range Urban Corridor. As western Colorado's largest city, Grand Junction is the economic and cultural center of the Western Slope region. Its name derives directly from its geography: "Grand" refers to the historical Grand River, renamed the Upper Colorado River in 1921, while "Junction" refers to the confluence of the Colorado and Gunnison rivers.

Name and Geography

Grand Junction lies in the Grand Valley at an elevation of 4,586 feet (1,398 metres), at the confluence of the Colorado and Gunnison rivers. The area was settled by ranchers in 1881 after the expulsion of the Ute Indians and was first called Ute, then West Denver, before the community was finally named for the junction of the two rivers, "Grand" being an early name for the Colorado River.

The city is located in the heart of the Grand Valley, a large Colorado River valley stretching over 30 miles east-to-west and 5 miles north-to-south. Mesa County is 76 percent public land, providing extensive open space. The Colorado National Monument, a unique series of canyons and mesas, overlooks the city on the west. The city is a transportation hub, situated at the convergence of Interstate 70, U.S. Highway 50, and U.S. Highway 6. Grand Junction is 247 miles (398 km) west-southwest of the Colorado State Capitol in Denver.

Grand Junction has a cold semi-arid climate and sits in a large area of high desert lands in Western Colorado, with winters that are cold and dry and a January mean temperature of 27.4 °F (−2.6 °C). The area's climate is much more temperate than the rest of the state; while other Colorado destinations are covered in snow, winters in Grand Junction remain relatively dry.

History

Pre-Settlement and Native Peoples

Long before European settlement, the Grand Junction region was home to successive Native American cultures. The first people to call this area home were the Fremont Indians, around 200 A.D., and by about 1300 A.D. the Fremont people had moved on, after which the Ute people settled the same land approximately a century later. Remnants of that tribal history remain, including petroglyphs and cave paintings. Spain had control of the area that Grand Junction occupies today until 1821, when Western Colorado became part of Mexico. After the Mexican-American War (1846–1848), the region came under United States sovereignty.

Founding and Early Settlement (1881–1900)

In September 1881, the former Ute Indian Territory was abolished and the Utes were forced into a reservation so that the U.S. government could open the area to settlers. The same day that army troops were forcing the Utes off the land, homesteaders, ranchers, and town builders were claiming their stakes. George Addison Crawford, born in Clinton County, Pennsylvania in 1827, was among the most consequential of those early founders. As Museums of Western Colorado historian David Fishell has noted, "Our main town founder, George Crawford, pushed for Grand Junction because it was the junction of what is now the Colorado River and the Gunnison River." On July 22, 1882, Crawford incorporated the town of Grand Junction and planted Colorado's first vineyard near Palisade, causing the area to become known as the Colorado Wine Country.

The narrow gauge Denver and Rio Grande Railroad reached Grand Junction from the southeast — from Pueblo via Gunnison — in 1882, followed in 1890 by the standard gauge Rio Grande Junction Railway from the northeast, from New Castle; these rail connections greatly contributed to the expansion and settlement of the area. By 1883, there were 59 businesses listed in Grand Junction, and by 1900 the city had 181 businesses and 3,503 residents.

Italian railroad workers and their families established a thriving community in the southwest downtown district during the 1880s; one of Little Italy's most prominent businesses was Stranges Grocery, which was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2012.

It took only two years of growth for Grand Junction to be chosen as the county seat for Mesa County. The town was incorporated in 1882 and reincorporated as a city in 1891.

The Twentieth Century: Agriculture, Uranium, and Boom-Bust

In the late 19th century, settlers were drawn to the fertile Grand Junction area for its agricultural potential, and the region remains one of Colorado's largest food producers, including peaches, pears, cherries, apples, and other produce. Fruit orchards, particularly between Grand Junction and Palisade to the east, remain important to the region's reputation and economy; fruits most often grown include peaches, pears, apricots, plums, cherries, and, particularly since the 1980s, grapes for wine. In this semi-arid environment, these orchards thrive from a combination of abundant sunshine and irrigation from a system of canals that divert water from the Colorado River.

In addition to abundant water, federal relief agencies played a critical role in helping Grand Junction through the Great Depression; the Resettlement Administration, part of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, had an office in Grand Junction and brought unemployed families to the area to make a new start in farming.

The mid-twentieth century brought a dramatic new chapter in the city's economic history. The federal government chose Grand Junction, the largest town in the area, to become a uranium processing site, making it very important to the Manhattan Project. In 1943, the U.S. War Department purchased a fifty-four-acre site in Grand Junction and built a refinery that produced uranium oxide for the government's nuclear weapons program. By 1946, the Colorado Plateau had produced more than 2.6 million pounds of uranium oxide, or "yellowcake," which was about 14% of the total uranium acquired for the Manhattan Project.

After the war, the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) coordinated uranium mining in western Colorado through its offices in Grand Junction, and profits from the uranium industry propelled personal incomes above the national average. In 1950, the Climax Uranium Company converted the old sugar beet factory into a processing plant for uranium ores mined in the Paradox Valley, and by 1954 Grand Junction had fifteen uranium companies and dozens of mining and mine supply companies. The Climax plant operated until 1970, when the price of uranium dropped and the industry became unviable.

The late 1970s and early 1980s brought an oil shale boom, followed by a devastating collapse. The economic bust, known locally as "Black Sunday" (May 2, 1982), started with a phone call from the president of Exxon to the governor, stating that Exxon would cut its losses; the bust was felt statewide, as Exxon had invested more than US$5 billion in Colorado. The city eventually grew rapidly in the 1990s, with many new residents having retired and relocated from other parts of the United States.

Economy

By 2008, the economy of Grand Junction appeared to be more diverse and stable than it had been in previous decades, with major contributors including health care, tourism, agriculture, livestock, and energy mining (gas and oil). The largest industries in the city, in terms of the number of employees, are healthcare and social assistance, retail trade, and educational services.

Grand Junction developed as the centre of a mining and irrigated-farm region — including, after the late 1980s, many productive vineyards — and as the transportation hub of the Colorado Plateau. As of 2017, the top five largest employers in Grand Junction were the Mesa County Valley School District 51, St. Mary's Hospital, Mesa County, the State of Colorado, and Colorado Mesa University.

Grand Junction is also the site of area offices of the U.S. Department of Energy and the Bureau of Land Management. The Bureau of Land Management presence reflects the scale of federal land in the region: seventy-six percent of the Grand Junction area is public land, totaling 1.5 million acres.

Natural Environment and Recreation

Grand Junction is set amid one of the most geologically dramatic landscapes in the American West. The area is home to what locals call "Nature's Trifecta": the Colorado National Monument, described as a mini-Grand Canyon; the Grand Mesa, the largest flat-top mountain in the world, with over 300 lakes; and Rattlesnake Arches, which has the second-highest concentration of natural arches in the world.

Just to the northwest of the city is the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area, which encompasses some 25 miles of the Colorado River and is a popular destination for boaters and mountain-biking enthusiasts; just outside the conservation area is the eastern terminus of the Kokopelli Trail, a mountain-biking route that extends 142 miles southwestward to Moab, Utah.

The Colorado River provides year-round fishing opportunities for bass, trout, crappie, walleye, and more right near town. Grand Junction also boasts one of only three wild horse sanctuaries in the entire country designated to protect wild horses.

The area's climate lends itself to year-round adventures like hiking, biking, and even golfing. For those who do crave the classic Colorado winter, skiing and snowboarding are just a 45-minute drive away at elevations exceeding 10,000 feet.

Education and Infrastructure

Grand Junction is the site of Colorado Mesa University, founded in 1925. The university enrolls nearly 10,000 students annually. Colorado Mesa University serves as a major educational, cultural, and economic anchor for the wider Grand Valley region.

The city has a council–manager form of government. As a transportation hub, Grand Junction sits at the convergence of Interstate 70, U.S. Highway 50, and U.S. Highway 6. Interstate 70 connects the city eastward to Glenwood Springs and Denver and westward toward Green River, Utah; Salt Lake City is reached to the west via Interstate 70 and U.S. Route 6. The city is also served by the Grand Junction Regional Airport, which connects the Western Slope to major hubs across the country.

Grand Junction is the anchor of the Grand Junction metropolitan area, which was home to over 150,000 residents as of 2020. This makes it not only the dominant urban center of the Western Slope but also a critical node in the broader intermountain economy stretching between Denver and Salt Lake City.