Zephaniah Felt was born in Galena, Illinois in 1858, and graduated from Princeton in 1879, a classmate of Woodrow Wilson. He came to Denver Felt went on to earn a law degree from Columbia, and in 1892 he and his wife Nora moved to Denver, Colorado from Storm Lake, Iowa. Felt pursued careers in both banking and real estate and devoted much of his time for the development of the San Luis Valley, helping to found the town of Romeo in 1899.