Mesa County CO Archives Biographies.....Orr, Robert A.  February 11, 1855 - ?
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Judy Crook jlcrook@rof.net January 9, 2006, 6:20 pm

Author: Progressive Men of Western Colorado

     Residing in a fine home one mile south of Grand Junction, where he is

actively engaged in raising excellent fruit and superior grades of stock, and

connected with several of the leading commercial and mining industries of the

country, Robert A. Orr is one of the prominent and successful business men of

Mesa county and a representative citizen of high standing and general esteem in

his community.   He was born on February 11, 1855, in the central part of

Kentucky, the son of Oscar F. and Elizabeth (Evans) Orr, natives of Kentucky and

descendants of some of the early pioneers of the state.  The father was reared

on a farm in his native state and remained there until 1873.  He then moved to

Missouri and settled in Cooper county, where he is still living at the age of

seventy-eight.  The mother is also living and her age is seventy-six.  They are

the parents of nine children, of whom Robert was the third.  He passed his

boyhood on his father's farm in Kentucky, and received his education in the

district schools of the vicinity.  At the age of eighteen he moved with his

parents to Missouri where he remained until 1880, when he came to Denver, this

state, arriving on the morning when the excavation work for the Union depot was

begun.  After a residence of three years in Denver, during which he was employed

in the nursery of Hallock & Grimes and in planting trees for the city around the

court house and other public buildings, he came to Grand Valley in April, 1883,

at which time he purchased the Grand Junction interests of the Denver Nursery

Company, and here took charge of the same, rearing the first fruit trees grown

in this section.  Three years later he moved to his present site on what was

then unimproved land through which the old Salt Lake road lay, cutting between

his house and where his packing house now stands, and which was then a dry,

barren sand hill.  Here he has been successfully engaged in fruit culture,

raising apples, pears and peaches for an extensive and exacting market.  He is

an experimenter as well as a grower, and has produced a choice variety of apple

known as "Orr's Long Keeper" which is in great demand.  He was one of the

organizers of the Grand Junction Fruit Growers' Association in 1892 and has been

a director of the same since its formation and at present is serving as

vice-president.  The association is one of the strongest and most prosperous in

the United States and did nearly three hundred and fifty thousand dollars' worth

of business in 1903, earning profits to the stockholders of more than thirty per

cent.  He is also interested in the stock industry with the ambition to produce

fine horses and other stock, and is present of the Mesa Lumber Company.  He has

stock in valuable oil wells and coal mines, and is a director of the new Union

Bank and Trust Company at Grand Junction.  To all the business interests which

he has in charge he gives care and intelligent attention, and he makes the most

of his opportunities in this way, being a man of excellent business capacity and

great energy.  In 1886 he was married to Miss Minnie Kennedy, a native of

Knoxville, Tennessee, and they have two children, Pern and Kenneth.  Their home

is one of the most attractive in this part of the county, and all its

appurtenances and features are in good taste and bespeak the culture and

refinement of its inmates.  Mr. Orr is one of the highly respected and

representative men of the county, with an influence always used for the best

interests of his portion of the state and its people.

Additional Comments:
From Progressive Men of Western Colorado.  Chicago:  A.W. Bowen & Co., 1905

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