George Crawford, Founder of Grand Junction

This honors George Addison Crawford, the man who founded the city around you. In September of eighteen eighty-one, just as the Ute people were being forced from this valley, Crawford led the Grand Junction Town Company onto the ground where the Gunnison meets the Colorado River. He located the site, platted the streets, and named the town.

Crawford had done this before. Earlier, in eighteen fifty-seven, he helped found Fort Scott, Kansas. In eighteen sixty-one he was actually elected governor of Kansas, though that election was thrown out before he could take office.

He died here in eighteen ninety-one and was buried in the city he had willed into being.