Source: the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary
Remembering Dayton O. Hyde
March 25, 1925 – December 22, 2018
Dear Friends,
Thank you so very much for the friendship, visits, donations and love all of you show the mustangs here at the Sanctuary.
The twenty-three years I have spent with the amazing Dayton O. Hyde at the spectacular Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary have gone by in the blink of an eye. As we at the Sanctuary carry on without him, we will never forget all the grand adventures and wisdom Dayton shared with all of us.
He measured the worth of a person by how well they could dig a post hole with a shovel. Needless to say we all needed help with that!
Dayton was instrumental in creating a forever home in South Dakota for unwanted wild horses with the help of kind, caring people. Some of these folks included the late Governor George Michelson and his aid, Roland Dolly, along with the Director of Bureau of Land Management, Robert Burford. That home is known as Dayton Hyde’s Institute of Range and the American Mustang’s Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary.
Today, the Sanctuary has been operating for more than thirty years on 11,000 acres in Fall River County. It is a world-renowned tourist attraction with hundreds of thousands of visitors from all over the world coming to see the beautiful mustang herds that make their home on the Sanctuary.
The battles and lawsuits Dayton waged against the Forest Service, the uranium miners and The Nature Conservancy were his way of protecting everything he saw. Through his non-profit corporation, the Institute of Range and the American Mustang, his legacy will live on. This includes his literary work, and his environmental and conservation principles and ideals.
With the passing of Dayton O. Hyde the world has lost the greatest modern contributor to the care of the wildlife and the planet. “I always believed man doesn’t have dominion over wildlife…instead, man has a responsibility to take care of all of our fellow travelers on this earth.” His words say everything he believed. With your continued support the wild horses will always run free here on this Sanctuary.
Thank you!
Susan W. Watt
Executive Director
Categories: Equine Rescue, Horse News, The Force of the Horse, Wild Horses/Mustangs
Straight from the Horse's Heart 
How wonderful! Sad to hear of his passing. But glad to know the sanctuary will continue on and the horses will be safe!
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I read Don Coyote back in the late 80s. It was only the Reader’s Digest condensed version, but it resonated with everything that I believe. I had no idea at that time just how connected we would all become or that Dayton was also a Wild Horse lover. I thought that the Wild Horse & Burro Act being passed would mean that they were all safe. The collective outrage at what has and is being done to our precious wildlife has ignited something in the public that is obviously disturbing to those entities that have profited for so long on the wholesale destruction of what does NOT belong to “them”.
Dayton helped light the fuse..or I should say Flame
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A man’s life is written on his face. You can see Dayton’s life..it shows
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I always wanted to meet him. I figure anyone that loves wild horses enough to buy 11,000 acres and make it a sanctuary has to be someone remarkable. He had a long time admirer in me.
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