Collection for person entities.
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George Vernon "Vern" Wood
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Early farmer and rancher on Glade Park. He was born in Delta, Colorado and moved to Glade Park, Colorado with his parents and siblings to cattle farm and homestead in April 1912.
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George W. Kelly
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He worked as a horticulturalist for the Redlands Company’s large agricultural operations in Mesa County, Colorado. He ran a boys club while he lived in Mesa County and remained involved with youth clubs for the rest of his life. William Rump, whose father Charlie Rump was one of the owners of the Redlands Company, had these remembrances of George Kelly during his oral history interview: “Well, that’s where he got his start and among other things, even in those days, George was a big organizer of kids. There was a group of us boys, varying sizes and ages that George sort of took under his thumb and organized into a semblance of a Boy Scout troop that we worked with George and he helped guide us for a number of years. I think that was his first contact with boys and since then I’ve heard that that’s been his life wherever he goes. He tied in with a bunch of kids and thoroughly enjoyed them… I remember one trip in particular. We took a spring wagon and a team of horses and went up what was then for sure the old Jacob’s Ladder…. we went up and it took two days to drive from here, from the old home ranch, to a cabin not too far from Enoch’s Lake, where we stayed for several days and then came back on the same road.”
He later moved to Denver, where he became one of the founders of the Denver Botanical Gardens and its director in the 1950's. According to the Colorado Encyclopedia, he served as the lead naturalist and nurseryman and directed the layout and establishment of the first gardens there in 1951 ("Denver Botanical Gardens"/Colorado Encyclopedia).
His papers are housed in the Western History and Genealogy Department of the Denver Public Library.
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George W. Lunnon
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George owned and operated a cement and construction business with his brother Charles Lunnon.
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George W. Robinson
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He was born in Illinois. He was a veteran of the Spanish American War, and came to Grand Junction, Colorado in order to recover from a war injury sometime between 1900 and 1904. There he met his future wife, Alice Coombs, who was teaching in Kannah Creek. They married in Salt Lake City in 1904, and lived in Park City for a time. In 1906, he bought a ranch on Salt Creek, near Collbran, where they lived with their child. The family moved again when their daughter, Mary, turned six, this time to the Riverside neighborhood of Grand Junction. He was a machinist, but later worked for the Utah Copper Company as the carpenters’ superintendent, before working for the government on a dam in Rulison, Colorado.
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George Wallace "Boots" Corn
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A local contractor and the founder of the Corn Construction company, which operated in Mesa County, Colorado for many years.
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George Wallace Bowman
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An important early Palisade fruit grower. He was born in Ohio to Alexander and Jane Bowman, Scottish immigrants and farmers. The 1860 US Census shows them living in Ruggles, Ohio, when George was five years old. By 1870, the census shows them living in Jackson, Iowa, when George was sixteen. His memoirs, located in the Palisade Branch Library, indicate that he first came to Colorado around 1880, and that he headed to Leadville in January of that year.
The 1885 Colorado State Census shows him living in Eagle County, Colorado, with the document showing that he was the proprietor of a saloon. The saloon was likely located in Red Cliff or Leadville. His granddaughter, Priscilla Walker, indicates that he owned the Star Hotel in Red Cliff.
Kansas marriage records show that he married Nannie Cutter in Davis County on May 5, 1887. Some other documents show her name as Nancy. According to Walker, they came to Palisade, Colorado in 1893. By 1900, the US Census shows that they were living in Palisade, where they farmed. An oral history interviewee reports that they purchased forty acres on First Street and planted peaches. The 1910, 1920, and 1930 US Censuses list his occupation as fruit farmer. The 1940 census shows his occupation as president of the "National Bank" at the age of eighty-five.
He was the president of Palisades National Bank and its principal owner for over thirty years, from 1910 to 1942. He was the founder of the United Fruit Grower's Association. According to Walker, his wife Nanny was the inventor of the Fruit Gathering Bag, a picking sack for peaches (in oral history interviews this invention is called the Bowman Picking Sack). The invention was patented under George Bowman's name in 1900. He died at the age of ninety-five and is buried in Grand Junction's Orchard Mesa Cemetery.
*Photograph courtesy of the Palisade Historical Society.
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