Jan Leslie - Hayden

Hayden is located in the beautiful Yampa Valley, and is named for Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden, head of the United States Geological and Geographic Survey. Members of the Hayden survey camped in the area in 1873 and 1874. The first post office in present Routt County was established here on November 15, 1875, with Albert Smart as postmaster. Hayden was incorporated on March 13, 1906, and celebrated its centennial in 2006.

The largest river in Routt County rises on the east side of the White River Plateau above Yampa and meanders north through Pleasant Valley to Steamboat Springs, and then west through Hayden and Craig to the Green River near the Utah line. This river, known throughout the county, suffered from the disadvantage of having two names. For hundreds of years, it had been known by the Utes as the Yampa, named for a plant they dried and used as food. In 1890, the United States Board of Geographical Names stated that the official name of the river was the Yampa River, but as late as 1907, there were still some who referred to it as the Bear River. For this reason, the Yampa River flows through the Bear River Canyon east of Hayden. This view of the Yampa River was taken in the canyon.

The first Routt County courthouse was located just north of Hayden. Maj. James B. Thompson, the first county treasurer, built this temporary structure to house the county records. Although the election of 1878 located the county seat at Hahns Peak, the records remained at Hayden until May 1, 1879. The building was moved to the Routt County Fairgrounds in the 1920s, and was accidentally destroyed in 1965.

The arrival of Samuel and Mary Reid in 1880 marks the beginning of Haydens recorded history. The Hayden post office, which had been discontinued after the Ute uprising in 1879, was reestablished on the Reid homestead south of Hayden in 1880. Mary Reid served as postmaster until 1890 when her daughter, Martha Donelson, succeeded her. The first school in the area was also located on the homestead.

William Walker was born in North Carolina and served in the Confederate Army during the Civil War. His first wife, Nancy Reid, passed away during the first year of that war, and after the war ended, he married Angelina Burch. Lured west by letters from his brother-in-law, Sam Reid, he came to Hayden in 1881 and settled on a homestead claim south of town.

Through a preemption claim, William Walker filed on 160 acres north of Hayden, and in 1882, he built this cabin. The lane between the homestead and his pastures south of town became the present Walnut Street. Part of the original town of Hayden was platted on his ranch in 1894. Walker, a staunch Democrat, served as Routt County commissioner from 1882 to 1884.

Ezekiel Shelton, who is shown here with his wife, Mary, was investigating reports of coal when he came to the area in 1881. The following year, Ezekiel and his son Byron left their Ohio home to set up a homestead in the Yampa Valley. As the first county surveyor, he surveyed the first roads in the county and served as Routt County superintendent of schools from 1889 to 1890.

Ezekiel Shelton and his wife, Mary, sit in front of their log home with its pole-and-dirt roof, which Ezekiel and his son, Byron, built in 1882. Before Mary arrived in Hayden in October 1883, Byron went to a sawmill near Steamboat Springs to get rough boards for the cabin floor. He had to ford the river 13 times on the 25-mile trip. (Courtesy of Tread of Pioneers Museum.)