Dateline: October 18, 2007

Hedley celebrates first century 

Hedley almost missed a milestone this year.

The community’s 100th anniversary sneaked up on Cotton Festival organizers who all wished they had done more to promote the important date this past weekend.

City Clerk Rhonda Shaw said the Hedley Lions Club wanted to celebrate the centennial last year, but it was finally agreed that 2007 was the more appropriate date. But when it came time to distribute information about this year’s Cotton Festival, the 100th anniversary was left out of the first draft of information for publicity.

As it was, the community did have commemorative 100 centennial T-shirts printed. All of those have been sold, and Shaw has 40 people so far on the waiting list for the re-order.

The doors of City Hall were open Saturday for a birthday celebration complete with cake and punch. The city also had on display a history of the Hedley school put together by Kathy Spier and an impressive array of historic copies of the Hedley Informer, which had been donated to the city many years ago by Joyce Boliver, wife of the longtime Informer publisher Ed Boliver.

The city also won first place in the Float Division of the Cotton Festival parade for its centennial-themed entry.

Hedley, it seems, does not have a single definitive written history. Most of the published information about the community’s origins is attributed to Virginia Browder, but some of her information is disputed. Donley County Historical Commission Chair Jean Stavenhagen has also researched the origins of Hedley during her efforts to acquire a historical marker for the Rowe Cemetery.

Rowe, a now extinct community west of the present site of Hedley, became a town in 1893. But after the turn of the century, discontent grew among the residents there regarding the quality of the soil and of the water at that location.

J.E.M. Hedley, R.H. Jones, and W.E. Reeves promoted moving the town, which was an idea that divided the people of the community. The first settlers came to the new location in 1907, which was named in honor of Mr. Hedley, who was the owner of the Hedley Hotel and was instrumental in getting the railroad to locate a depot in the new town.

By 1910, The Clarendon News reported that both communities active but also reported that the issue of depots for the towns had been taken to court. Hedley won the depot question, and by 1911 Rowe was a ghost town.

Hedley grew well in its early years. Thomas Durham started the first newspaper there, the Hedley Herald, in 1908, but the business suspended publication a year later following a poor crop year. In 1910, J. Claude Wells started the Hedley Informer, which stood the test of time and recorded the town’s history for many decades.

On February 27, 1915, an election was held to incorporate the community, and the citizens voted in favor of the measure 43 to 25.

Since that time, the City of Hedley has been governed by 16 mayors, including R.H. Jones, W.E. Reeves, L.E. Thompson, A. Vinyard, C.L. Kensey, C.E. Johnson, Ross Adamson, Henry Moore, C.H. Reid, C.L. Johnson, D.E. Boliver, Judy Clendennen, Jon Leggitt, Murrell Whitaker, Shauna Monroe, and the present Mayor Janie Hill.

In addition, ten men have served as the City Secretary, including R.E. Newman, U.J. Boston, J.W. Noel, W.H. Moffitt, J.P. Devine, W.L. Mosley, M.O. Weatherly, Mack Garrison, Danny Monroe, and Randy Shaw.

The city is presently governed by Mayor Janie Hill and Aldermen Bruce Howard, Leon Ward, Ricki Baker, Colleen Owens, and Gay Lollar.

By 1930, the population of Hedley had grown to 807 citizens; but like much of rural America, the town suffered a loss of population following the Depression and World War II. By 1980, the population 380, and the latest census count in 2000 was 379.

Today, Hedley remains a vital part of Donley County with a very active public school system and annual celebrations – like the Cotton Festival and the annual Chicken Barbecue – that have been continued from generation to generation in the close-knit community.