BERNICE MUSSER (LEFT) greets visitors at the Delta County Historical Museum. She’s volunteered at the museum since she moved to town 21 years ago.

The Musser ranch was sold in 1988, after 102 years in operation. The ranch encompassed several homesteaded parcels on the Uncompahgre Plateau and along the Gunnison River, as well as the old Bridgeport and Shreeves ranches. In all, the Mussers operated on about 100,000 acres, including grazing permits on BLM and USFS land.

Bernice (Hendrickson) Musser lived in Escalante Canyon from the age of 8. Her folks were trying to make a go on a ranch west of Delta, but couldn't keep up with the payments during the Great Depression. The Mussers, longtime friends, needed help, so the Hendricksons moved to the remote canyon. Bernice attended a small school in Escalante Canyon. By the time she was in the seventh grade, Bernice was one of just two kids in the school and it was closed. During the winter months she moved to town with her mother to attend school in Delta, a common practice among families in the canyon. She did the same when her own two children, Margaret and John, were old enough for school.

Growing up in Escalante Canyon was pretty lonesome for a young girl, Bernice Musser recalled in a 2004 DCI article written by Caitlin Switzer.

"I climbed hills and rocks, and I played house. When I was older, I helped my mother and did the cooking."

In the old days, it took nine hours to get to the ranch. By the time Bernice moved to the canyon, the horse and buggy had given way to automobiles, but the roads were in such poor condition and the vehicles were so unreliable, it could still take up to five hours to get to Delta.

Their last acquisition of ranch land brought them within 14 miles of Delta. "It seemed like we were right in town then," Bernice said.

Bernice, her husband Jack and his brother Tom were the third generation to run the family ranch holdings. The ranch began when their grandfather John Musser, a Civil War veteran, loaned money to his brother-in-law, Robert Shaw Kelso.

"When he wanted his money back, his brother-in-law told him he would have to take cattle," Jack Musser told Switzer.

And so Musser left his native Virginia for Colorado, where he set out to clean up the mess Kelso had made of the initial cattle ranching venture.

Musser and his family arrived in Delta in 1886 - wife Anna, daughter Edith, son Albert, and John Wilson Musser Jr., nicknamed Don. Shaw Kelso (Kel) Musser - father of Jack and Tom - was born in a sod-roofed cabin in Escalante Canyon in 1894.

Kelso Musser married Edith May Baker in April 1916, and they had three children, Alice, John "Jack" and Thomas, according to "Whitewater . . . The People, Their Stories and The History," written by Carol Anderson.

She writes that John Wilson Sr. died in 1929 and the property and cattle wound up in the hands of the second generation of Mussers - brothers Kelso and Don. As Jack and Tom grew up, they shared the management of the growing ranch with their father and uncle.

Jack was the rancher, Tom the cowboy, and Bernice became the rancher's wife. Whether irrigating pastures or riding through rough country in winter's frigid cold, the demanding chores were just part of the life they had inherited. The family moved from place to place on the massive ranch, depending on where the work was.

Bernice is the family archivist, organizing the many historical photos and the volumes of articles that chronicle a family history synonymous with the American West. She regularly conducts tours of Escalante Canyon, sharing firsthand accounts of growing up in an area rich with history. She feels very comfortable giving the tours because she's so familiar with every aspect of canyon life. She draws on her own vivid memories, as well as neighbors' accounts contained in Muriel Marshall's book "Red Hole in Time." Marshall took the time to visit all the families living in the canyon, something the Mussers rarely had time to squeeze in between ranching chores.

Bernice is also active in the Friends of the Delta Library and the Delta Cattlewomen. She was named Cattlewoman of the Year by the Black Mesa Cattlewomen, and received a "Service to Agriculture" award from the Colorado Farm Bureau in 1995.

She enjoys flower and vegetable gardening, canning jams and jellies, and baking bread. She says she's never shaken the habit of buying in large quantities established when a quick run to the grocery store simply wasn't in the cards. Accustomed to cooking for four or six people - or during branding time, up to 30 - she says nothing seems quite as tasty when it's cooked for just one person so she enjoys occasionally eating out with a friend. A resident of Delta County for 80-plus years, she's got plenty of those. She's quick with a smile or a friendly word, and is always eager to share the history of Escalante Canyon, a major reason why Delta is "Authentic Western."

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