Sidford F. (Sidford Frederick) Hamp

Sidford F. Hamp was an English-born author whose writing became closely linked with Colorado and the Rocky Mountain West. Archival records note that he traveled with the 1872 expedition that visited the region later known as Yellowstone, and that after his family moved to Colorado Springs in 1877 for health reasons, he later joined them there.

He went on to write books for young readers as well as short stories, plays, and opera librettos. Several of his best-known works are set in Colorado, including The Treasure of Mushroom Rock (1899), The Boys of Crawford’s Basin (1907), and The Trail of the Badger, all of which show his interest in frontier adventure, ranch life, and the mountain landscape.

Records from the University of Wyoming’s American Heritage Center also show that he married Josephine Cable on November 11, 1899. Even from the surviving catalog and archive descriptions alone, Hamp comes across as a writer who used firsthand western experience to give his fiction an easy sense of realism and movement.