Charles Trumbull Hayden
4 Apr 1825 - 15 Feb 1900
diedTempe, Arizona, USA
bornHartford County, Connecticut, USA
SchooltblData
BiographyFreighter and merchant; President of C. T. Hayden Co., general store and flouring mill.Came to Tempe c1871.
Lived at 3 W. 1st Street.
He was appointed as a Federal Judge in Tucson, and was known as Judge Hayden for rest of
his life.
He was a shareholder in the Tempe Irrigating Canal Co. with one water right, on 9 Oct 1873.
He held 8 water rights on 31 Mar 1875.
Elected a director of Tempe Irrigating Canal Co., Oct 1887.
Member of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, c1880-May 1882.
President of the Territorial Normal School Board of Education, 1885-1888.
Officer of the Bank of Tempe, c1882.
Trustee of Tempe School District No. 3, 1884.
Educated in Connecticut as a professional school teacher; taught school in New Jersey, Indiana, and Missouri. As a young man, he moved west, to Independence, Missouri; then worked as a shipping clerk for a merchandise business in Santa Fe, NM, and in 1848 he started running freight wagons on the Santa Fe Trail.
In 1858 he bought wagons and supplies and established a freighting business in Tucson which
supplied army posts, mining camps, and towns across the territory in the days before the railroads came to Arizona. Between 1858-1888 he had one of the largest freighting businesses in Arizona.
In the 1860s, on a business trip from Tucson to Fort Whipple, he camped at the Salt River, when the water was too high to cross, and surveyed the Tempe townsite from atop Tempe Butte.
In November of 1870, Hayden and four associates filed a claim in Yavapai County to 10,000 inches of water from the Salt River for the Hayden Milling and Farm Ditch Company, which started construction as of November 17, 1870.
He filed a homestead declaration on land in section 15. He returned to the Tempe area, c1871.
He is generally credited with being the founder of Tempe. Was the first to establish commerce and trade in the Tempe area, which made a permanent settlement possible. When Hayden heard that settlers were excavating a canal in the area, he brought his wagons up and offered to provide much needed supplies for the canal builders.
He had a willow and adobe structure built on the site, which served as the first general store
in the Tempe area, operated under the name of
C. T. Hayden and Co.
The newly formed Tempe Irrigating Canal Company offered to grant two thousand inches of water, or seventeen shares in the company, to anyone who built a flour mill, a provison tailored to Hayden's plans. He bought two shares of stock for $200 with an option to buy eight more shares at the same price, later acquiring 17 shares.
In 1872, he opened a store in a more permanent structure, laid the foundation for a flour mill, and arranged for the extension of the Kirkland-McKinney Ditch along the base of the butte to the mill site to supply the source of power that would turn the grind stones. The Hayden Flour Mill began operation in 1874. In 1873, he started building an adobe complex, which included a house and a store with a
walled patio. He built a cable-operated ferry on the river, and moved his freighting operations to the Salt River Valley. The settlement, which became known as Hayden's Ferry, had a blacksmith's shop with three forges, a store, an orchard and vineyard.
Through the early 1870s, he still maintained his primary residence in Tucson, and moved to
Tempe after his marriage in 1876.
In 1876, he provided Mormon settlers with provisions, employment, and land.
In 1883 he owned 640 acres of land, 500 of which were planted in grain and 50 in alfalfa. The mill at
this time was producing 300,000 pounds of flour per month.
He was one of the chief promotors of education and was a strong advocate of locating the territory's first Normal School (now ASU) at Tempe.
Helped raise money to purchase land for the site of the Territorial Normal School.
He strongly opposed the incorporation of Tempe as a town in 1894.
OSB 1
BIO-Hayden
BIO-Hayden, Charles T.
Old Settlers Collection, THM
Tempe CD, 1892-1899
Double Butte Cemetery, Tempe
TH-231.01
Lewis, History of Irrigation in Tempe, p. 35
Lamb, Historical Overview
HPS-146; HPS-193; HPS-232
Solliday, Journey to Rio Salado, pp. 52-56, 61
Hopkins and Thomas, The ASU Story, pp. 51, 95 Hayden Biog File, "Charles T. Hayden"
Weekly Phoenix Herald, 3 Jan 1884
Ariz. Gazette, 3 Dec 1880, 27 May 1882, 30 May 1882
Person TypeIndividual
