By JIM SPEHAR
“The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.”
— Leo Tolstoy
Thirty-five years ago, Brian Mahoney and Larry Jones had a dream.
Decades later we walk and bike the paved paths of the Riverfront Trail. Post-COVID, we’ll once again attend concerts at the Las Colonias Amphitheater. My granddaughter will be able to enjoy one of her favorite outings at the River Park at Las Colonias while boaters and paddlers put in at the nearby launch.
New jobs are being created at Las Colonias business park and on the other side of Fifth Street at the Riverfront at Dos Rios. The trail once limited to a small stretch of the Colorado River in Grand Junction now spans the Grand Valley from Palisade on the east out to Fruita and Loma and includes two of the three sections of the Colorado River State Park.
Last Tuesday, their dream now a signature fixture in our community, Jones and Mahoney were honored for their inspiration. Next to the bridge to Watson Island, just steps from where they once stood looking at Tom Lewis’ collection of old vehicles, drums full of sketchy liquids, tires and batteries and other junk, there’s now a sandstone bench commemorating their vision. The original bridge they crossed is still visible under the newer structure accessing the island.
The initial path was not smooth.
Even their Grand Junction Lions Club said “no” to their initial request for $100,000 to help buy the island from Lewis, opting instead to first fund a $5,000 feasibility study. A couple of years later a $100,000 pledge from the Lions matched by the city of Grand Junction kick-started the effort. The club’s history of involvement with the Riverfront spans the decades from the inception of the project through providing the impetus for amphitheater construction and now the commemorative bench unveiled this past week.
It struck me, at the dedication ceremony, that the amenities we now enjoy along the river also offer a lesson, particularly for those of us to whom patience does not come naturally.
I don’t know if Brian and Larry anticipated it’d take 35 years for their initial vision to reach its current still-evolving state. It’s been a couple of decades since the three former mayors in the Lions Club, Reford Theobold, Gregg Palmer and yours truly, joined with another who was present last Tuesday, Bruce Hill, and, along with community members and Larimer Square redevelopment guru Dana Crawford, sketched the first formal outline of the multiple use project that’s now emerging on the old Jarvis property west of the Fifth Street bridge.
Patience and time might be worth contemplating the next time some of us sit along the banks down there.
Mahoney and Jones would be the first to point out there are others whose work over the years fostered redevelopment of Grand Junction’s Riverfront from a toxic-laden junkyard to the amenity we enjoy today.
I’ll likely overlook some but they include Ben Carnes, R.T. Mantlo, Ward Scott, Bill Ela, Jim Robb, Pat and John Gormley, Bill Prakken, Jane Quimby, Bill Findlay, Rebecca Frank, Tillie Bishop and Lenna Watson. Propping up their efforts behind the scene over three-plus decades were some visionary planners including Bennett Boeschenstein and a husband/wife team, Mesa County’s Keith Fife and Kathy Portner from the city of Grand Junction.
In 1971, Sam Baseler and other locals had incorporated Greenbelt, Inc., the very first effort to establish a park along the river. Kathy’s 1988 master’s thesis about something she called Confluence Park rethought how our riverfront might be revitalized. Helen Traylor, Lucy Ela and the Grand Valley Audubon Society helped create the first 1.5-mile trail section near Connected Lakes. A decade after the purchase of Watson Island, Elizabeth Harris’s unrelenting advocacy birthed the first new public attraction along the riverfront, the Botanical Gardens. Paul Nelson championed the pedestrian bridge to Eagle Rim Park that provides access from Orchard Mesa.
But, Tolstoy’s words aside, our two most impactful Riverfront warriors just might be named Jones and Mahoney.
“A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes
Jim Spehar’s parents lived a few steps from the Colorado in Riverside when they first moved to Grand Junction in the mid-1940s. His personal history along the river includes loading mill tailings into an old GMC to backfill the foundation of a later Main Street home and scrounging parts from junkyards on both sides of Fifth Street. Comments to speharjim@gmail.com.
"along" - Google News
January 31, 2021 at 06:25PM
https://ift.tt/3tdUDzV
Patience and time along Grand Junction's Riverfront | Columns | gjsentinel.com - The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
"along" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2z4LAdj
https://ift.tt/35rGyU8
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Patience and time along Grand Junction's Riverfront | Columns | gjsentinel.com - The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel"
Post a Comment