John H. Hamilton

1910 - 1994
Fort Bridger

John H. Hamilton was born June 9, 1910, to Charles B. Hamilton and Roda M. Johnson. He was a third generation Bridger Valley cattleman. His grandfather came to the area with Albert Sidney Johnston’s army in 1857 (as part of the Utah or Mormon War) and then became cattle boss for Judge William A. Carter, who ran the first cattle in Uinta County as well as the Big Horn Basin. His father, raised at Fort Bridger, homesteaded 160 acres on the Smiths Fork in 1899 and from this start built a sizable home ranch. John and his three sisters rode horses to the local roadside schools during the Depression and he later graduated from Mountain View High School. He married Lola I. Landers in 1936 and they raised six children. John worked for his father on the ranch for $35 a month, supplementing their income with trap lines for beaver, muskrat, and the occasional mink. The haying was done with horse drawn mowers, rakes, and the old beaver slide and Jenkins hay stackers. Cattle were trailed for the first time in 1916 to summer range in the Uinta Mountains 15-20 miles away.