History of Hyde Park in Utah's Cache Valley, 1860-1990 by Dale Z Kirby

This is the tour of the new town we moved to in the last 3 months. It has such a rich pioneer heritage. I just finished reading History of Hyde Park in Utah's Cache Valley, 1860-1990 by Dale Z. Kirby. The author is a direct decedent of one of the first settlers in this town and had some very interesting journal entries from his ancestors.

My favorite part of the book was finding out that quite a few of the people that live in our ward are related to the early pioneers in Hyde Park! And it is really cool that our house was built by a guy in our ward's dad, who is related to the early settlers in this valley. And the water we get from the tap is from the natural Spring that attracted people to settle here in the first place!



This is a picture of the view from the up the hill just past the church. It shows the mountains west of Hyde Park over in Logan and beyond.

The church we attend is just around the corner from our house. It is a newer stake center build in the late 1990's but one of the first things they did when the pioneers got here was build a church. They had to keep rebuilding it bigger and bigger as more settlers came into the valley. They added a gymnasium where most of the fun dances and community events were held for a long time. Basketball and Baseball were very very popular to keep the youth from getting too bored and out of mischief.



The first bishop called by Brigham Young was William Hyde. He also served with Joseph Smith in the Mormon Battalion. He was a hard worker and a fair and honest man. He organized and lead the people in Hyde Park to build a community that cared for the people, their God, the land and the freedoms we have in this country.


Many people in Hyde Park also helped in the quarries to bring the rock down for the building of the Logan Temple.

This is a picture to the East. North Logan's mountains. We look at these mountains our our kitchen window! I love them covered with snow!



Hyde Park is actually only 3.2 Square miles. There are only just under
2,000 people living here. All of the shopping and businesses are in Logan. There isn't anything here but neighborhoods and farmland. We do have our own city building, community center and post office and a few parks but the schools are all in Logan and Smithfield. But the early settlers took education very seriously. There was always schools built in Hyde Park but they are all burned down or fallen down but one, it is still used today but is part of the North Logan School district. Many many people from Hyde Park were teachers and administrators in other schools nearby. Plus the university is USU is just 4 miles away over in Logan. 4-H was very popular and still is today.



It is a really cool place to live. The early settlers used to have dairy farms, mink farms, the RS sisters got into raising silk worms so they didn't just have to wear wool all the time. There were lots of sugar beets grown here and hay. They had a train station just down the road so they could get mail and goods from other towns. There used to be a co-op grocery store and a few other stores. But in the middle 1900's the town voted to limit businesses and growth in the town because it was getting to crowded and expensive to get water to the new homes. There are also a lot of canals running all through Hyde Park. Everyone had a barn and gardens on their property. There are a lot of people today that still have horses and small gardens. There were even polygamists in the 1800's that lived here in town...until they made it against the law and the rules of the church and they had to work our other options for living and caring for their multiple families. The police and fire stations are today combined with North Logan's and even the Library. It is just a mile down the road from us but in N. Logan. So we do all of our shopping and errands in Logan where they have grocery stores and the DI and Kohl's, a tiny mall, Walmart, Home Depot, Borders and restraunts plus lots of other stores because it is a "big" university town.

Our house has a big backyard and a few fruit trees. It also has a little barn and the water is on an irrigation water share system. There are Llamas behind our property owned by one of our neighbors and most of the neighbors near us all have goats,chickens, dogs and cats.


Our cool house!

Look at the awesome icicles hanging from our roof !


We love it here! We miss CALIF. but this is where we live now. It will be a great place for the kids to just run around and have fun all summer! We can't wait to jump into the fun of Hyde Park!