Legendary Locals of Fruita

By Denise Hight and Steve Hight

New York City poet and newspaper editor William Pabor headed to Colorado in 1870, heeding Horace Greeley's advice to "go West." After helping to establish Greeley, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins, Pabor continued west over the Rocky Mountains and founded Fruita as a family-oriented, agrarian-based community in 1884. Since its inception, Fruita has attracted farmers, ranchers, shopkeepers, entrepreneurs, writers, and visionaries, who all came in search of community spirit and the wide-open spaces. The area has also been fertile ground for fossil hunters, and Fruita has both its own fossil, Fruitafossor windssheffeli, and its own dinosaur, Fruitadens haagarorum. Fruita is also known for its unusual characters, including a headless chicken named Mike and a feline journalist named Charlie the Cat. From the 1910 apple queen Mabel Skinner to the pizza queens, Anne Keller and Jen Zeuner, of today, presented here are just a few of the stories of Fruita's always fascinating legendary locals.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Legendary Locals
• Release date: Feb 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9781439655788

Denise Hight

Several photographers recorded this Mesa County community�s story through the years, and their evocative images were collected by the Lower Valley Heritage Chapter. Local authors and historians Denise Hight and Steve Hight turned to the chapter�s collection and the photographs of others to relate Fruita�s legacy onward from William Pabor�s early days.

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INTRODUCTION

The story of Fruita is a story of its people. Before William Pabor founded Fruita in 1884, the area was a dry, dusty desert. But Pabor saw beyond the desolate landscape, and he envisioned an agricultural paradise filled with hardworking happy families and covered with fruit trees irrigated by water from the nearby Grand (now Colorado) River. Others shared his vision, and for a few decades, his agrarian vision became a reality. Settlers arrived, homes were built, orchards were planted, businesses were started, a brick schoolhouse was built in 1887, a brick high school was added in 1904, and the community prospered. For those few decades, Fruita’s reputation as a fruit-producing region was unsurpassed. Early fruit farmers such as John C. Wilson won national prizes for their apples, and Fruita resident Mabel Skinner was selected as the National Apple Queen in Denver in 1910. Of course, none of this would have been possible if it were not for the Kiefer brothers, who brought irrigation to the land.

But it was not just fruit growers who moved to the new community of Fruita. Farmers, ranchers, cowboys, and shopkeepers arrived here to set up a new life. William Weckel started a family farm, and his son Ed won national awards for his wheat and potato crops. Other homesteaders grew crops or started cattle ranches. Fruita’s downtown area was filled with hardware, grocery, clothing, and general stores started by entrepreneurs such as Joseph and Iris Roth, William and Earl Brumbaugh, Albert Timmerman, Michael Fromm, William and Pearl Roach, Charles Barnes, and Olaf Svanson.

Fruita suffered a severe blow when, beginning in the 1910s, a severe infestation of the codling moth and a succession of spring freezes destroyed the fruit crops. The farmers tried to save their trees, but by the early 1920s, most of the trees had been pulled up, and the fruit industry was gone from Fruita forever. Fortunately, Fruita was strong and diverse enough to survive the blow. Farmers planted other crops, including potatoes, sugar beets, and alfalfa. Although Fruita endured other downturns, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s and the boom and bust cycles of the energy industry, the city has continued to grow and thrive.

We are fortunate that Fruita’s story has been recorded throughout its history by a number of journalists, such as Edgar Beard and Gene Thomas; photographers, like Minnie Hiatt and Pearl Roach; historians and writers, such as Irma Harrison and Earlynne Barcus; and even a fabric artist, Florence Orr, who created the quilt for Fruita’s centennial celebration. We are pleased to include their stories, because without their contributions, much of Fruita’s history would be lost.

There are many farms in the area, and descendants of Fruita’s earliest homesteaders still live here, but Pabor’s community, originally based on fruit culture, has grown and diversified over the decades. Much of Fruita’s current economy is based on recreational tourism. Some of this tourism is centered on Colorado National Monument and other nearby public lands, and several prominent individuals associated with the monument are included in this book. In recent years, Fruita has become a world-class mountain-biking destination. Fruita also attracts many visitors to its festivals, such as the annual festival dedicated to Mike the Headless Chicken, one of Fruita’s most legendary locals.

Like all communities, Fruita depends upon its public servants: firefighters, police officers, and government employees; its service groups and organizations, including the Rotary Club and Lions Club; its medical workers; institutions such as the chamber of commerce; and Fruita’s legion of dedicated volunteers. There are many unsung heroes in our community; we include a few of their stories here.

Legendary Locals of Fruita is not intended to be a comprehensive history of the people of Fruita, but rather a brief cross-section of a few of the many individuals, families, businesses, and groups that have called this place home. Of course, this slim volume only contains a fraction of the people who deserve to be considered legendary locals, and we apologize for not being able to include more. In some cases, we had information about a remarkable individual, but especially for Fruitans from the early years, we were unable to track down a print-quality photograph. This book includes people from Fruita’s past and present, but we have tried to include as many people from the past as we could before their stories were lost forever. We do apologize for any inconsistencies and errors. We used many sources of information in writing this book, including books, newspapers, genealogical web sites, family histories, and personal interviews, and we have found that recollections regarding dates, events, locations, and people tend to vary quite a bit. We have greatly enjoyed talking to Fruitans and learning more about this great community. We also enjoyed reading old copies of the Fruita Times and other, shorter-lived, local newspapers, and we enjoyed researching the archives of the Lower Valley Heritage Room, lovingly collected by Yvonne Peterson. We have learned so much about the people of Fruita, past and present. We feel honored to have been entrusted with this project, and we hope you will enjoy the stories.

(Note: For historical and genealogical reasons, we have provided the maiden names of married women when we could, but for reasons of privacy and security, we have not provided them for living women or for deceased women whose children we know are still living unless they were given to us for publication.)

Fruita Union High School

Although Central School, built in 1887, held high school classes, a dedicated high school was built in 1904. Because this was a union school, that is, a union of the smaller local districts, students from the surrounding unincorporated farming communities such as Star, Rhone, Hunter, and New Liberty also attended. Here the proud students and faculty pose in front of the newly constructed high school. (Courtesy of LVHC.)

CHAPTER ONE

Fruita’s Foundations

William Pabor grew up in New York City, but after becoming acquainted with the philosophy of Horace Greeley, who believed westward expansion would solve the nation’s problems of unemployment and poverty and provide opportunities for those willing to work, he traveled west to Colorado in 1870. After helping to establish the cities of Greeley, Colorado Springs, and Fort Collins on Colorado’s Front Range, Pabor and his wife, Emma, headed to Western Colorado and, with the help of other investors, founded the town of Fruita, in a largely unpopulated area a few miles west of Grand Junction, in 1884.

Others soon followed in Pabor’s wake and made their way west to Fruita. The Kiefer family was able to turn Pabor’s vision of an agriculture-based community into a practical reality when they started a ditch company, which provided irrigation water to cultivate plants and trees. One of the first priorities in the fledgling town was to build a permanent schoolhouse, which was completed for the 1887–1888 school year. One of the first schoolteachers, Mabel Steele, who moved here with her parents in 1887, married Frank Kiefer, who died in 1909. Mabel brought up her three children here and remained in Fruita for the rest of her life.

Shopkeepers also set up in Fruita. Joseph and Iris Roth were amongst Fruita’s first shop owners, with their appropriately named Pioneer Store. Another pioneer was James T. Nicholls, who arrived in 1883. When he died in 1967, he had lived longer in the Fruita area than any other resident.

Fruita may have lacked the amenities of larger cities, but pioneers like Hilarian Charley Wagner ensured that Fruita had a cultural life. He edited the first newspaper in Fruita and started the first band.

Fruita’s growth slowed down in 1888 due to a lawsuit between one of the town’s developers and the Travelers Insurance Company, which stopped development in Fruita until its resolution in 1893. Fruita never caught up to the growth in nearby Grand Junction, but the community of today is the legacy of founder William Pabor and other pioneers.

William E. Pabor

William Edgar Pabor was born in Harlem, New York, on May 21, 1834. He left school at age 12 to help support his family but developed an interest in writing and editing. He was a published poet by the age of 16 and became editor of the Harlem Times, a