People

: John S.

: John S. Bancroft

: John S. Gordon; A Grand Junction pioneer who built the first crossing over the Colorado River in town, Gordon's Ferry, and the first road to Pinon Mesa, known as Gordon’s Toll Road. The road ran from Grand Junction and opened to traffic in 1883. The ferry was moored on the south side of the Colorado at the mouth of the Gunnison River. Colorado State Census records indicate that he was born in Missouri, and that he was 37 years old in 1885. According to Dorothy Alveretta (Gordon) Mahoney, the grandaughter of Patrick Henry Gordon, John S. Gordon was the son of Patrick Gordon by his first wife (the family were Mormon and, according to Dorothy, Patrick Gordon was polygamous). Patrick Mahoney’s family was driving cattle from California to Texas in early 1881 when they came to what is now Mesa County, Colorado. Since they arrived in Western Colorado prior to the removal of the Ute, they waited to cross the river until the Ute were forcibly removed to Utah. Patrick Mahoney died in 1882, leaving John and his siblings to fend for themselves. In 1882, after the founding of Grand Junction, John S. Gordon began building a ferry at the confluence of the Grand and Gunnison Rivers. He also built Gordon’s Toll Road, which extended from the ferry up to Pinon Mesa, where sawmills were built. On March 3, 1883, the Grand Junction News mentions a Jonathan Gordon being arrested and transported to Utah to stand trial for Grand Larceny (it is unknown if this is the same person). The Colorado State Census of 1885 shows that he was a stockman. It also shows him living with his two younger, half-brothers, George and Edwin Gordon.

: John Saltzgaver

: John Samson

: John Samuelson; Samuelson and his wife, Angie, who died in 2002, owned the Glenwood Post, predecessor of today’s Post Independent, for four years in the late 1960s. But the family legacy at the newspaper dated back to 1936 when John’s parents, Jack and Rose Samuelson, first bought the paper. He was on the Education Committee of the Glenwood Springs Chamber of Commerce which was helped developed Colorado Mountain College