From the Boulder County Almanac (Daily Camera, Sunday, June 23, 1996)
Hygiene is located about 1 mile northwest of Longmont. It has held onto its small-town personality even as urban growth comes closer and closer. The unincorporated town is at the crossroads of North 75th Street and Hygiene Road - Hygiene's commercial sector is at this intersection. These two major streets connect with the Diagonal Highway and 17th Street in Longmont.
Originally called Pella, Hygiene was settled in 1859 by pioneer George Webster, who found a low area along the St. Vrain River that provided a safe crossing. South of this bridge, a wooden building called Fort Pella became the nucleus from which Hygiene grew.
Farming attracted many people to Pella, and during the 1880s people afflicted with tuberculosis also arrived. The town changed its name to Hygiene in 1882 to honor a sanitarium for these patients, which was called the "Hygiene House." Patients were treated with mineral water carried from a spring on nearby Rabbit Mountain. By the turn of the century the house had been converted into a hotel.
A railroad from Denver to Lyons was built in 1885 to move sandstone from quarries in Lyons to the growing population of Denver. Fort Pella served as a depot on that line.
The original Dunkard Church - named after a religious group that baptized residents by immersion in water - is now called the Brethren Church. It is surrounded by a cemetery maintained by the Hygiene Cemetery Society.
Today, dairy farms, a machine welding shop, a feed store, gravel and sand companies and other businesses provide jobs for the rural community. Clark's Food Store and the Hygiene Cafe are favorite meeting places for the town's residents.
Because Hygiene has no formal government of its own, it is steered by the Boulder County Commissioners.
Source: Hygiene residents, Daily Camera files, Hygiene Fire Protection District and Clark's Food Store
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