A small green sign stating the word ‘Hyde’ is all that gives a slight hint of an unincorporated community located rolling hills of southern Wisconsin. In the 1898 Turner’s Hand Book and Gazetteer of Wisconsin, it lists the population of Hyde as 95 and states “is in Ridgeway township, Iowa county, 9 miles from Arena, the nearest shipping point on the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Ry. Arena is reached by tri-weekly stage. It has a cheese factory, a grist mill, shoe shop, blacksmith shop, general store and a Congregation church.”

I didn’t spot the cheese factory which was built in 1891 but did see the the Hyde Store which housed a post office and was a mail and supply stop for a stage coach between Sauk City and Mineral Point. Lena Olson and Annie Johnson operated the store for half a century. Today it is a small country bar.

The old 1883 Hyde Blacksmith Shop was deteriorating and it was donated to the Hyde Blacksmith Shop Territory committee and torn down piecemeal in 2000. In 2008 stone mason Art Kirch offered to rebuild the shop for a lower sum than committee projected and the blacksmith shop was rebuilt on a new location. Each year since it was rebuilt, the blacksmith committee has held an open house to familiarize the public with this icon from the history of the valley.

Hyde Blacksmith Shop