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A site about the history of Parachute Colorado that people rarely know about.

The Colony Oil Shale Project was started in 1964. Here is a picture of one of the oil buildings in 1973.

Exxon basically built the entire town of Battlement Mesa including all of the modular homes and apartments as well as the activity center all of which are still there today. They were originally built to house the oil workers. Here is what they looked like when Exxon was first building them in 1975.

On black Sunday (May 2, 1982) Exxon closed the doors to their oil shale plant and thousands of workers lost their jobs. The gate was locked when the workers showed up for work. The entire Colony Oil shale project came to a halt without giving workers any notice.

Many people left the area but the people who did stay in town put these bumper stickers on their cars.

Several years after all of this, Unocal took over and thought that they could make a successful business out of oil shale.

It did not work and the plant sat abandoned for many years.