Classic Grand Junction Photos Via ‘Your 1975 Bob Grant Calendar’
For decades, the free Bob Grant calendar was a fixture at offices and homes around Grand Junction, Colorado. Take a look back at "Your 1975 Bob Grant Calendar."
These were provided for free by Mesa Federal Savings. Interestingly, it seems some people collected these and still have them to this very day.
Classic Grand Junction, Colorado Photos
Travel back in time some 41 years and see what Grand Junction and the surrounding area used to look like. Chances are you might see someone you recognize. These calendars were comprised of photographic highlights from the previous year's Daily Sentinel stories.
Images Featured In The Calendars
Bob Grant was first and foremost a newsman. He had little interest in scenic or nature photography. With that, I can't help but think these calendars posed something of a challenge. Obviously, it would have been in poor taste to publish a calendar featuring crime scenes, plane crashes, and other hard news stories.
Throughout the year, Bob would set aside copies of prints that he felt could be candidates for the calendar. Usually, these were human interest shots, very seasonal, preferably including some kind of Western Colorado landmark.
What Brought This Up?
A post went out today on the Facebook page "You Know You're From Grand Junction When..." displaying the cover of a Bob Grant calendar. The person posting mentioned they had saved their old calendars. This prompted me to start digging up some of my old Bob Grant calendars.
What Became of the Bob Grant Calendars?
The Bob Grant calendar came to a screeching halt when the savings and loan scandal erupted back in the 1980s, resulting in a temporary freeze of any kind of advertising financial institutions in Western Colorado. With that freeze came the end of "free" marketing by the bank, specifically, the free Bob Grant calendars.
By the mid-1980s Robert Grant retired from the Daily Sentinel, and for the most part, from photography.
Special thanks to the late Arlie Jordan, my dad, and Bob Grant's son-in-law, for all the work in scanning the 1975 calendar.