Lyda Hill

Lyda Hill (born 1942) is an American investor and philanthropist.

Lyda Hill was born on September 17, 1942 in Dallas, Texas. Her father was Albert Galatyn Hill, Sr. (1904-1988) and her mother, Margaret Hunt Hill (1915-2007). Her maternal grandfather was H.L. Hunt (1889-1974).

She attended the Hockaday School, an all-girl boarding school in Dallas, from 1952 to 1960. Former Hockaday Headmistress Jeanne Whitman said that Hill’s “tenure at Hockaday was marked by early acumen in mathematics and polite distaste for the classroom.” She entered Stanford University in 1960, but soon left to attend Hollins University, a small liberal arts college for women in Virginia. She earned a degree in mathematics from Hollins in 1964 and received its Outstanding Alumnae Award in 2009.

In 1967, she launched Hill World Travel, and in 1970 she became President of Seven Falls, a tourist attraction near Colorado Springs, Colorado. In 1975, she joined the Young Presidents' Organization. Hill World Travel had become the largest travel agency in Dallas and one of the largest in the country when she sold it in 1982.

She continued her business activities in 1990 with a significant investment in the Fort Worth Stockyards, an historic and popular tourist area highlighting the city’s western heritage.

She developed and constructed the Garden of the Gods Visitor and Nature Center in Colorado Springs in 1995 - designed to be free to the public while generating revenue through its retail operation to assist in maintaining Garden of the Gods Park. In 2011, after the center had donated $1.6 million to the Garden of the Gods Foundation, Hill gave the Visitor Center to the Foundation.

She is a member of Charter 100, the Chief Executive Organization, the Citizens Council of Dallas, the Committee of 200, the Dallas Assembly, the International Women's Forum, the Philosophical Society of Texas, and the Young Presidents Organization.

On the west side of Colorado Springs, Lyda Hill donated land and a building to Planned Parenthood that now houses the 2nd largest woman's clinic in Colorado.

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