Vestigial, Colorado - Erich

You know how humans each have an appendix and we don’t know what it does? Or how we have a tailbone which is a fusion of four vertebrae even though we don’t have tails. Or how whales have hip bones which are disconnected from the rest of the skeletal system.

These are all vestigial. This means that they hang around but with a different use (or possibly no use) than what they were originally intended to be. Our appendix must be leftover from an evolutionary ancestor who needed it for some reason. Our tailbones are from our ancestors who had tails to help balance their weight when walking or leaping on all four legs. Whales are marine mammals which evolved from land mammals. Early whales had legs, but that was not of an evolutionary advantage, so now they don’t. But the bones are still there, just in a different form.

We are currently in Grand Junction, Colorado. I wondered, why is the city called Grand Junction? Like tailbones and whale bones, it’s vestigial!

The “junction” in Grand Junction has to do with the confluence of two rivers. It is here that the Gunnison River and the Colorado River meet. But why “Grand”? That’s what is vestigial and what is so interesting.

Prior to 1921, the part of the Colorado River which began in present-day Rocky Mountain National Park and flowed to present-day Canyonlands National Park wasn’t called the Colorado River. It was the Grand River. The Grand River flowed from Colorado into Utah and met the Green River in Canyonlands in Utah. Downstream of that confluence, it was called the Colorado River.

So at the time that Grand Junction was named, this was the location of the confluence of the Gunnison River and the Grand River, flowing downstream as the Grand River. So, it was the Grand Junction, since it was a junction with the Grand River. Isn’t that grand?

What it means is that originally the Colorado River didn’t even flow through Colorado. That brings up a few questions: First question – Why was Colorado named Colorado? As is often the case in the western U.S. there were territories that became states. So the state of Colorado was named for the Colorado Territory. And the Colorado Territory was named because it means “colored red.” A lot of the rock in Colorado (particularly in the west, where I am now) is red.

The Colorado River was named for the same reason. It cuts through much red rock. So neither the river nor the state was technically named for one another.

Second question – How did the Grand River get renamed the Colorado River? That was due to the lobbying of a Colorado Congressman named Edward Taylor. He was a true believer in the wonders of Colorado.

The Colorado River was one of the most important rivers in the western United States. Taylor wanted that famous and important river to be part of his state too. He pushed Congress hard for a resolution to rename the Grand River, to make it more of the Colorado River. And in 1921, they agreed to do so. They passed a joint resolution renaming the Grand River as the Colorado River.

But places like Grand County, Grand Lake, Grand Valley, and yes, Grand Junction, kept their names. I guess that relegated the names of these places to the appendices of Western U.S. History. Which is perfect since they are all vestigial, like our own appendices.