People

: John James Phillips Phillips

: John Jarvie; A general store owner in the Browns Park town of Bridgeport in the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. According to the Bureau of Land Management's John Jarvie Historic Ranch website, he was a Scotsman. According to Minnie (Crouse) Rasmussen, who grew up knowing Jarvie as a family friend, he was a fastidious store keeper who kept shop in a log building. He had a great love of books. When Rasmussen grew up, she stayed in contact with Jarvie after she moved to a homestead. They shared and read books in which they wrote letters to one another. She went to return a book to him in July 1909. She found that his store had been robbed. Following a trail behind the store, she found his body. He had been killed by two drifters, who were never caught. He had four sons: John Jr., Tom, Archie, and Jim. According to Rasmussen, one of the sons tracked down the drifters, but was killed himself. *Public domain photograph of John Jarvie (from the Bureau of Land Management collection)

: John Jay Collier; He was born to John Witt Collier, a cattle rancher, and Margaret Almeria "Maggie" (Howell) Collier in Grand Junction, Colorado on a farm at 9th Street and Chipeta Avenue, across from the first Grand Junction High School. US Census records indicate that his father was from Tennessee and his mother from Iowa. His father was a farmer who sold hay and raised horses, and later became a cattle rancher. His mother was a homemaker. The family moved to the Redlands in 1917, when John Jay was 4, to a location near the old Black Bridge where it connected the Redlands to Orchard Mesa. The 1920 US Census identifies their area of residence as Fisher. The family ranched cattle, wintering them in the Redlands and summering them on Pinon Mesa and later in Glade Park, and John Jay grew up helping with this work. He went to Grand Junction High School where he was in the honor's program, graduating in 1931. He went to school at Mesa College (now Colorado Mesa University) in the early 1930's for teacher education. He later graduated from Flagstaff Normal School (now Northern Arizona University) in 1942 with an emphasis on Individual Instruction in county schools and Educational Philosophy. He married Lora Elizabeth Sleeper on May 29, 1935, when he was 22. Elizabeth was a daughter of the prominent Sleeper and Sieber ranching families on Pinon Mesa. The 1940 US Census shows them living in Grand Junction, where he worked as a public school teacher and she was a homemaker. He was a teacher and principal who taught in the West Divide Creek School and Star School in Mesa County in the 1930's and 1940's. He often held programs, readings, plays, and all-night school dances at the West Divide Creek schoolhouse, where everyone was welcome. The 1950 US Census shows them living in Ypsilanti, Michigan, where John worked as the district representative for a recreational equipment firm. In his free time, he wrote a column for the Rifle Telegram Newspaper, was a consultant for Parks and Recreation, wrote and directed adult plays at Fair View School and had dinner the homes of the school community. *Photograph from the 1931 Grand Junction High School yearbook.

: John Jefferson "Peg-leg" Foster; He was a Telluride mining cook who lost his leg in a mill during a time of labor strife. His entire lower leg had been amputated, and he walked on a two-by-four wooden peg, which is how he got his name. His son, Earl Foster, stated that he battled a morphine addiction related to his injury. He worked at the Columbia and Alta Mines. He learned surveying by correspondence and, after the accident, moved with his family to Norwood, where he prospected. He and his wife Laura (Bristol) Foster homesteaded in Paradox Valley in 1908, where he prospected for uranium. There, they both worked on the Galloway Ranch. According to one account, he was deemed “The Outlaw of Outlaw Mesa” for shooting and killing a Swedish man, Axel Peterson, who was attempting to shoot up a schoolhouse in Paradox, Colorado. A Daily Sentinel account attested Peterson had “terrorized the [Paradox] area with his reckless shooting.” When he shot several bullets into Foster’s cabin, John Foster grabbed his rifle, opened the door, and shot him. In 1913, the family moved to Bull Canyon near Bedrock, where John and Laura ran a Boarding house for W.L. Cummings. After John and Laura divorced, she ran the boarding house alone. He was remarried three times, twice to the same woman. Before his time in Telluride, he was an early settler of Unaweep Canyon in Mesa County, Colorado. Laird Smith recalls meeting Peg-leg while he was picking peaches. Peg-leg fell from a tree and broke his 2x4 leg. His wife brought him another one.