Fort Uncompahgre College Presents
Echos of the Uncompahgre
Lecture Series
Lectures and Oral Histories on the cultures and traditions of the Uncompahgre Valley
Tracking Down the Past:
The Search for Robidoux's Lost Fort
Wednesday
Sept. 3rd @7pm
Casey Dukeman
City of Delta
Fort Uncompahgre Executive Director
Casey Dukeman has over 25 years of experience as an archaeologist, geologist, and historian in the Western Slope and greater Rocky Mountain region. His career spans both academic and Cultural Resource Management professional spheres. Mr. Dukeman served as a member of the Western State College Anthropology and Geology faculty for more than a decade, as well as taught history and science for six years at the secondary level. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in both Anthropology and History from Western State College, as well as a Master of Arts in Archaeology from the University of Wyoming. Dukeman is currently the Executive Director of Fort Uncompahgre Interpretive Center and serves as Information and Innovation at the City of Delta, Colorado.
Ritual and Violence on the Puebloan Frontier: The Early Pueblo I Settlement of Florida Mesa, Durango, Colorado.
Wednesday
Sept. 10th @7pm
Rand Greubel
Research Fellow
Colorado Council of Professional Archaeologists
Rand Greubel is a former co-owner and principal investigator at Alpine Archaeological Consultants in Montrose. He worked as a professional archaeologist in the western US for almost 40 years. A Colorado native, Rand grew up in Montrose, graduating from Montrose High School in 1978. He obtained a BA degree in Anthropology from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and an MA in Archaeology and Heritage from the University of Leicester, UK. His first professional experience was working on the Old Dallas archaeological project (Ridgway Reservoir) under Dr. William G. Buckles in 1980. Over the course of his professional career he participated in hundreds of archaeological surveys and dozens of excavations in the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, Plains, Rocky Mountains, and Southwest regions. Although retired, Rand continues to dabble in Colorado archaeology.
Title Pending
Wednesday
Sept. 17th @ 7pm
Dan Deuter
Local Artist - Former Director,
Fort Uncompahgre Interpretive Center
Dan Deuter was born and raised on the family cattle ranch in South Dakota. He grew up as a cowboy, breaking horses and working cattle. Although he has been drawing and doing artwork all of his life he really didn’t start his art career until he was 21.
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To enhance his art career Dan has worked many different jobs including cowboy, hunting guide in Alaska and Colorado, Director of the Ft. Uncompahgre Living History Museum (an 1830’s style trading post), buffalo hunter and has been featured on several different TV programs. Dan has also modeled for many of the western artists that are working today.
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Most of the oil paintings that Dan produces are generally done from his own life experiences, especially the buffalo hunting and cowboy scenes. His paintings, known for their authenticity and action, hang in art collections worldwide. Dan and his wife, Ellie, live on their small ranch in western Colorado and still ride every chance they get.
Sense of Place: The Gunnison River Valley
Wednesday
Sept. 24th @ 7pm
Joe Colwell
Local Author
Although he grew up in a small Illinois town, Joseph has spent over 50 years living and working across the West. During his college years at the University of Idaho studying forestry and wildlife management, he worked in Idaho State Parks, and Mt. Rainier and Grand Canyon National Parks. He then spent over 27 years with the US Forest Service in five different national forests in four states. After retirement from the Forest Service, he spent ten summers doing fire information work on wildland fires, assisting the media and homeowners in understanding wildfires. As a second career, Joseph Colwell has authored eight books.
Joseph and his artist wife (and editor) Katherine now own and live on their 40-acre nature preserve in Delta County in western Colorado. They specialize in assisting others in exploring creativity, using nature as the source of inspiration. They can be reached through ColwellCedars.com or jcedarsj@gmail.com.
Recent Old Spanish Trail Research
Wednesday
Oct. 1st @ 7pm
Jon Horn
Research Fellow
Colorado Council of Professional Archaeologists
Jon Horn is mostly retired from Alpine Archaeological Consultants, of which he was a co-founder in 1987. Jon arrived in Montrose in 1984 after graduating from Lewis & Clark College in Portland with a BA in History in 1979. He got his MA from the University of Idaho in Anthropology with a focus on Historical Archaeology. Over his 45-year career, he has worked in every western state except Nevada recording 1,000s of historic and prehistoric sites and writing over 350 cultural resource technical reports. Jon has prepared 33 National Register of Historic Places nominations, six Historic American Engineering Record packages, and was one of the key authors of the Historical Archaeology Context for Colorado and the Historic Context for Irrigation for the state of Wyoming. Jon’s work has enabled him to delve into historic homesteading, ranching, railroads, irrigation systems, precious metal and uranium mining, hydroelectric power production, logging and lumbering, and a variety of other historic industries and technologies. He has a particular fondness for historic trails and wagon roads and has been involved in the recordation and evaluation of the Old Spanish Trail since 2010.