1. Dorothy Ruth Phelps, b. 1914
2. David James Phelps, b. 1915
3. Catherine Marie Phelps, b. 1917

James A. Phelps, Jr. — Jim — was raised on the western frontier in Colorado.  His father started out in the timber business, then the family ran a boarding house in Victorville, Colorado providing lodging for men working in the Cripple Creek mines.  After the gold boom waned, the Phelps family settled into cattle ranching.  Jim's childhood observation of adults siezing upon opportunities and developing the skills to take advantage of them would serve him all his life.

As a teen, Jim became friends with a young man by the name of Julian Grunze.  Julian was a 'town boy' whose dream was to become a real cowboy like his friend Jim.  Eventually Jim convinced his father to hire Julian to help herd cattle on the Phelps ranch and Julian's dream was realized, a favor which would be repaid in the future.

When Jim became an adult, he had hopes of becoming a partner with his father in his cattle ranching business but that was not to be.  Eventually Jim struck out on his own and with a loan from a bank, purchased land on the western slope of the Colorado Rockies in an area known as Gypsum.  In 1913 Jim married Kate Bandhauer and began their life together farming the homestead land where Jim built a small home, a chicken house, and a barn out of logs.

One of the first problems Jim had to solve on his new farm was how to irrigate his crops.  The fields were above the water level of the Grande (now Colorado) River and electric pumps were unheard of then.  In answer to this need, Jim engineered a large flume which collected water from the mouth of a tributary creek about two miles up the river and piped it to the fields, across the Grande River, using gravity flow.  This flume still functions today.

But life on the Western Slope was short-lived.  In 1921 the price of food in the U.S. fell nearly 72% and remained depressed, driving many farmers to ruin.  The promise of building a life on the land in Gypsum was cut short when Jim was forced to forfeit his land to the bank.  But Jim's old friend, Julian Grunze, now running a tile business in Santa Monica, CA, repaid Jim's favor from earlier years.  Julian wrote saying that he would give Jim a job in his tile business.  In May of 1923, Jim built a large box which he fastened to the back of his Model T, packed it with food, loaded the car with a tent, a few remaining possessions and his family, and struck out for a new life in California.  Julian put Jim to work as a helper, the lowest unskilled position in the tile trade, but within a few months Jim mastered the skill of setting tile and was promoted.  Because of their friendship and Jim's capability, Julian began teaching Jim the business as well.  Within a year, Jim knew all aspects of the tile business and sought to establish his own company.  He chose Santa Barbara.

Jim moved to Santa Barbara to get his tile business started while his family remained in Santa Monica.  By June 1925 Jim Phelps had established his business and had located a rental home for his family.  The Phelps family was to move the very next day when the 1925 Santa Barbara earthquake hit.  Though this event delayed the Phelps family's move, the home they had rented was not severely damaged although many buildings were, including the County Courthouse.

Partially due to post-earthquake renovation and rebuilding, the tile business was brisk in those remaining pre-Depression years.  As the construction of the new Santa Barbara County Courthouse commenced, Jim's business, Community Tile Company, was awarded the contract to install all of the decorative tile and tile flooring.  Jim worked closely with architect William Mooser to develop the Spanish Moorish tile designs for the Courthouse.  By then Jim had a crew of about a half dozen men.

Soon after the Courthouse project, Jim built his own home in Santa Barbara.  Jim included decorative tile throughout his home, much of it left over from the Courthouse project. The home and its original tile work, located at Cheltenham and Tye Roads, are still intact today.

Around 1930, Jim and a small group of Santa Barbara businessmen formed the Russell Mining Company and in about 1932 began mining for gold at both Mina, Nevada and at Angels Camp in northern California.  As the Superintendent of the Russell Mining Company, Jim began dividing his time between his tile business in Santa Barbara during the winter months and spending summers at the mines.  Though the mines did produce a little bit of high quality gold, it was barely enough for the company to break even.  In 1935, while at the Angels Camp mine, Jim suffered a heart attack.  When he was well enough to travel, he returned to Santa Barbara.  The Great Depression had curbed the profitability of the tiling business and in conjunction with Jim's new health problems, the decision was made to return to Jim's now-deceased father's homestead in Colorado where he could live simply and recuperate.

After living in Colorado and raising chickens for about three years, Jim's friend, Harry Palmer, told him about an opportunity to purchase citrus groves in Arizona for a very reasonable price.  Soon both the Palmer and Phelps families packed up and moved to Arizona. Jim purchased about 50 acres of citrus and worked diligently to develop his groves.

Once established in Mesa, Arizona, Jim built an attractive adobe home and that gave him a new idea.  There was a growing demand for new homes in the area and people liked the job he had done on his own house.  So he gathered together a group of talented workmen and went into business as a building contractor.  Over the next 10 years or so he built about a dozen homes in Mesa but eventually his health, and now the health of his wife Kate, demanded that he seriously consider retirement.  In 1961, Kate Phelps died.

After marrying again in his twilight years, Jim discovered the beauty of Sedona, Arizona and he built a home there for his retirement.  After a few years of relatively quiet life, his heart finally gave out and he died at the age of 84 years.

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