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| 9/29/2008 6:00:00 AM | Email this article • Print this article | Farmers Telephone Museum dials up grand opening
Hope Nealson
Journal Staff Writer
Some of Montezuma County's original pioneers will be honored Saturday, Oct. 4, in the same 1920 building that housed the Farmers Telephone Co., which brought the first telephone service to the area.
As part of the grand opening of the Farmers Telephone Museum in Pleasant View, some of those interviewed for a living history CD and book, like 84-year-old Junior Hollen, will be honored from 2 to 4 p.m.
Bessie White and Hollen are brother and sister who moved from Alberta, Canada, to Sylvan in 1934. The community is eight miles inside Colorado, the heart of dryland farming country that also includes Ackmen and Pleasant View.
Stories such as theirs are illustrated in the CD and book "Talking News: The Story of Farmers Telephone Company," written and produced by 17-year Cortez resident Sonja Horoshko.
"It's their point of view, their history," said Horoshko, who runs Art Juice studio in the Wilson Building in downtown Cortez. "That lends authenticity and the truthfulness of what this project represents to the community at large. Another aspect is it's for the common public as well; it's bigger than the story itself."
For many of these pioneers, the Homestead Act of 1862 was the beginning that gave them the right to claim 160-acre properties with a $13 filing fee, as long as they built a home and ranched or farmed the land.
Most chose pinto beans as their crop, the only one to flourish on the dry and dusty land.
News and information traveled via horses or by foot, as far as Lewis or Cortez for the luxury of making a phone call.
Enter R. Wyman, who in 1920 built the first Farmers Mutual Telephone Company on his property. The land included the old bluff trail, a route from Dove Creek to Cortez, through McElmo Canyon and out to Bluff, Utah.
The 16-by-23-foot, white-framed telephone building was erected, with a switchboard and poles installed to carry "the talking news" across the county - and country.
White remembered the people of her childhood growing up in Southwest Colorado as part of her living history.
"I think Ackmen, Sylvan, Pleasant View, was one of the first communities in the area to put in a phone system. It was a progressive thing to do," she said. "You have to remember, they weren't rich people. For them to start a business, a phone company, they didn't have a lot of money to invest. It was a sacrifice to do this, yet they had the gumption and the initiative to do it."
White said it's good for the people moving into the area today to realize the risk farmers took in this part of the state.
More than 20 people were involved in the living history project, including the interviewees, artists, musicians, producers and the Farmers Telephone Company board of directors.
Farmers Telephone Company backed the project with help from a grant by the Colorado Council on the Arts, not only as a way to preserve the company's history, but also the pioneers.
"In this living history project, we captured a dying generation," said Jan Dixon of Smart Choices. Dixon provided editorial and marketing direction on the project.
"It's just such an honor to do this project," she said. "The heritage and legacy of the Anasazi is so huge, but we have not done as much to capture the legacy of other people who have settled here in this county. It's an honor to everyone out here who came and settled."
The companion "Talking News" CD to the book is a local collaboration featuring Colorado artists Randal Williams, a vocalist and guitarist from Boulder; Robert Young of Dove Creek, who played the 5-pound ham can mandolin; composer Juantio Becenti, of Aneth, Utah, Navajo Nation, who arranged the piano sound bed; and horse and chicken whinnies and cuckoos from Fresh Start Horse Rescue.
Photographer Mark Montgomery illustrates the book, which will be available for sale at the museum's opening along with the CD.
The open house will also feature the Cortez bluegrass band Ranger Rick and the Swamp Things, along with ice cream, tours of the museum and speeches celebrating the living history project.
From the proceeds, Horoshko said they hope to fund future work at the museum and more living history projects next year on subjects that relate to the region around Pleasant View, from pinto beans to sunflowers.
Dixon said eventually a museum committee will be organized for that purpose.
"Sometimes you have to show that you've done something. You start kind of small and show that you can do something," she said. "We're just hoping people come out and celebrate and enjoy it with us."
Area residents who contributed their life stories and living memories include Judy and Roy Crow, Charlyne Evans, Hollen and White, Bill Lancaster, Mary Murphy, Jimmy Perry and Gala Pock. Karen Petit and Lorene Young also contributed voice-overs to the CD. Nancy Wharton worked with Dixon on editorial direction. Call 970-562-4211 to purchase a CD or book.
Reach Hope Nealson at hopen@cortezjournal.com.
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