Kenneth Hilton
1932 – 2026
Salida, CO

Ken Hilton was born in La Junta, CO on October 27th, 1932. His folks were living on a small acreage at the edge of town. In the era of drought and depression another mouth to feed was a major undertaking.

His dad Albert was an Ozark born native of Galena, MO. His mother, the former Leta Wise, was from a nearby Stone County community called Crane. Making a living was hard, but the Hiltons didn't plan on leaving.

For one thing the young couple didn't have enough money to go far, and they didn't have a reason for change. Then, Albert started wheezing with asthma. He went to an old country doctor. The cure recommended was moving to Colorado.

To do this, the father bought a model A dump truck and found work hauling sand and gravel to concrete mixes as US 50 was being paved from Missouri across Kansas to Colorado.

At La Junta, the family stopped to put down roots. Their small farm featured chickens, livestock, hogs and garden produce. It was an ideal place for a boy to grow up and in the process learn how to work.

From the toddler age of feeding chickens and gathering eggs, he advanced to helping his dad butcher cattle and hogs for others, along with field work of thinning and shucking corn.

The place was five miles from school in La Junta. After doing morning chores, Ken would ride a bike to attend classes and to make spending money he delivered newspapers on the way home in time to take care of the evening chores.

He recalls the weather presented problems at times, such as a change in temperature from 100 degrees to an overnight 0, the dust storms and a 49 inch snowfall, but the elements were accepted as part of life.

With the advent of Pearl Harbor, a neighbor with a service station wanted to enter the Navy, so he sold the business to the Hiltons for $100. This added to Ken's work. The station was one with hand pumps and he remembers filling the gas bulb at the top with 10 gallons of gas. He also recalls putting kerosene in the cars radiators as anti-freeze.

As it turned out, there was purpose to the early training. Albert Hilton died when Ken was 14. That put him on his own as the producer. While still in high school trying to get a high school education, he began working as an apprentice in a butcher shop to go with the service station and newspaper tasks. Classes often got in the way and finally he quit school.

He married his first wife Kathryn in 1949 and had four children, Karen, Gary, Julie and Sandra.

Going to work in a tire recap plant, he also was working at a service station until 1959 when he got on with the Santa Fe Railway as a carman trainee, learning about carpentry mechanics and welding. It was the best paying job in La Junta, and it lasted 3 1/2 years.

He got the opening through Leslie Houchens, a machinist who married Ken's mother. When he was laid off by Santa Fe in a union labor dispute, Leslie, with 32 years with Santa Fe, lost his job too.

The Santa Fe had provided Ken with enough skills to start working in construction, helping build houses and a diversion dam. In 1962, he heard about a mill construction project at nearby Cheraw and went out to see about a job.

Ken found work at Cheraw, only he got more than he bargained for. He wasn't paying close attention and by mistake approached the boss who was going to use the mill, rather than the one who was building it.

He was put to work as office manager, keeping track of details. As the mill went up and into use, his appetite to learn everything he could about the operation helped him learn about feed and nutrients.

Within two years he was made mill superintendent in charge of production and processing dairy feed along with mixtures for range animals. The mill experience convinced him nutrients solved most of the problems attached to growing livestock.

This came mainly from an involvement with dairy herds. With his desire to help dairymen succeed, he eventually was supplying the top 35 herds in the area.

A few years later he traveled west and found himself in Fruita CO. Where he met his second wife Carol Woodward a fellow co-op employee and a Grand Junction girl.

With ambition established and rewarded, Ken began looking toward greener pastures of being his own boss. A traveling salesman told him about Salida Feed and Farm Supply. It had been for sale for more than five years, as Glen Jelineck was waiting for the right person to operate it.

Ken filled the bill and in. 1972 bought the business and with his new wife started their life in Salida.

They bought 35 acres south of Salida and Ken spent his free time building their forever home. They kept a few cattle to keep the weeds down and maintain his interest in agriculture as well as raising two girls, Cari and Kendra.

Ken sold Salida Feed and Farm Supply in 1994 to retire and bought a ranch in Saguache where he continued raising cattle and horses.