Douglas County is chock-full of Hiers. The family came early in our history and in force. So much so that there was a time when brothers Bob and Ed Hier felt that they knew 80% of the people in the county and that half of them were relatives. Cousin Bill once joked, “One year, we got so thick that the county had to spray for us.” The Hier family is recognized as one of the prodigious pioneer lineages of the area.

Nearly 200 years ago, church records identified a farm worker, Charles Heuer, born in 1814 in Pomeranian Prussia. His family of three daughters and two sons, Johan and Frederick, sought their futures elsewhere. All immigrated to the United States in 1872, became citizens by 1877, and found their way to Iowa. There, the sons modified their first names to John and Fred and their last names to Hier and Hyer.

Something pulled them westward, Sedalia becoming their grandsons’ final home, along Jarre Canyon Road (Colorado Highway 67). John’s son Charlie married a Curtis and his son Arch, with his partner Art Price, founded Hier and Price Drilling. The business continues today as Hier Drilling Co.

Charlie’s brother Robert and his wife Flora had four children. Settling first in Jarre Canyon, they relocated to a parcel known today as the Allis Ranch on State Highway 105. One son, Carroll Hier, began to emerge from the pack.

A high school graduate, Carroll rose humbly enough from day laborer to iceman. Electricity was rare in the early part of the century and hauling block ice for ice boxes was, though not lucrative, a decent living. It is said that the chunks he hauled weighed as much as Carroll himself did. Later he found employment with the DuPont Dynamite Company in Louviers.

By 25, Carroll was elected to county assessor, adroitly also having saved enough capital to buy the Castle Rock Fuel and Feed operation, on the current site of today’s Angie’s Restaurant in downtown Castle Rock. After relocating to Castle Rock, Carroll incorporated the local grain elevator into his business. The latter piece, no small operation, was a sight to behold as trains would arrive, decouple, and be individually loaded. This transfer blocked traffic to the consternation of locals. In one year, 103 carloads of wheat were shipped via his operation, the bulk of it harvested in Cherry Valley, near Franktown.

By now, Carroll’s success could aptly be called meteoric, as he served on the town council and school board. Eventually he was elected mayor of Castle Rock and served from 1948 to 1956.

Never satisfied and seeking new horizons, Carroll purchased a ranch south of Sedalia that his father once owned, turning it into a thriving poultry operation. In his best year he processed 20,000 turkeys.

Tiring of turkeys, Carroll sold the ranch to become the Douglas County Clerk, serving for 12 years. Ignominiously, he was there in 1978 during the great county courthouse fire. To his credit, and that of a fireproof safe proving to be as advertised, our county records survived intact.

As final tribute to service over the years, the county commissioners, town council and school board staged a “Carroll Hier Day,” recognizing his numerous accomplishments.

 

By Joe Gschwendtner; photos courtesy of the Heir family and DCL Archives and Local History