Red Feather Lakes

History

Other than Native Americans, only occasional hunters and trappers passed through the Red Feather Lakes area until the middle of the 19th century. The first known settler was John Hardin, who built a cabin about from the current Red Feather Lakes village in 1871. Other settlers, many of them families of Hardin's eleven surviving children, homesteaded and built nearby. In these early years, the settlers were primarily ranchers, but another important activity was lumbering. The trails in the area, some of which eventually became roads, were built by tie hacks, who hauled their railroad ties down to what is now Tie Siding, Wyoming, where they were used in building the transcontinental railroad. The first government survey, in 1879, showed only one lake in the region: what is now Creedmore Lake, several miles to the north of the present community. As the area developed, networks of toll roads, lakes and water ditches appeared. By the beginning of the twentieth century, water rights had become a major issue in the region, and who had ownership of the water in the various streams, man-made lakes, and diversions continued to spark legal battles until a Supreme Court decision in 1921 awarded a major portion of water being diverted from the Laramie River tributaries to competing claims in Wyoming. Manhattan grew to a peak of 300 inhabitants in 1898, but substantial gold was never obtained, and it became a ghost town a few years later. By 1895, the population was sufficient that a school district was established and a schoolhouse constructed. Timbering and sawmills grew in importance in the area, and in 1902, a National Forest Reserve (later to become part of Roosevelt National Forest) was established, principally to exercise some control over the helter-skelter timbering.…

Largest nearby schools

• PSD Mountain Schools
  Elementary · RED FEATHER LAKES · 99 students · 9:1 ratio