Beyond the Great Divide

Beyond the Great Divide turns Abbott Fay's story-hunting to the other side of the mountains. The Great Divide in the title is the Continental Divide, and the stories here come from the western part of the state, away from Denver and the Front Range. The description frames it as unusual facts about the Centennial State, focused on the Western Slope.

Fay gives you 101 unique stories of places and people from Colorado's early days. That is a lot of short pieces, so the book reads well in sittings of a few pages. Open Library files it under anecdotes, biography, history and local history, which fits a book built from many small portraits of towns and the people who lived in them.

The description presents Fay as a retired history teacher and an adjunct professor at three colleges, someone who has spent five decades on Colorado's past. He wrote it for readers who want the Western Slope's own history rather than the usual Denver and gold rush version. It is a nonfiction history from Western Reflections.

Beyond the Great Divide is written for people who live on the Western Slope, grew up there, or travel through it and wonder about the towns. Readers in Grand Junction, Montrose, Gunnison and Durango will recognize its territory. It also suits history teachers who want local episodes for a Colorado unit, and gift buyers shopping for someone with roots in western Colorado. If you prefer one big narrative to many short pieces, note that it is built as a collection of 101 separate stories.

Abbott Fay spent years teaching on the Western Slope itself: at Mesa College in Grand Junction until 1964 and then at Western State College in Gunnison from 1964 to 1982. That residence helps explain a book with this focus. Open Library lists him with nine works across a long career, and you can find the ones we publish on his author page.

More about Abbott Fay →

Colorado's Western Slope has no official boundary. It is the colloquial name for the part of the state west of the Continental Divide, where water flows toward the Pacific. It takes in counties such as Mesa, Delta, Gunnison, Montrose, La Plata and Garfield, and cities including Grand Junction, Montrose and Durango.

The history is layered. Ancestral Puebloans farmed and irrigated there before leaving in the late thirteenth century, and the Ute people arrived around 1300. Fur traders opened posts such as Fort Uncompahgre from 1828, and gold seekers followed in 1858 and 1859. After the 1879 Meeker Massacre the Utes were removed from the state. Ranching, mining and tourism shaped the economy, and fruit orchards line the Colorado and Gunnison rivers.

Source: Wikipedia, Colorado Western Slope