Articles of necessity were made by hand or obtained by barter. Morris summed up the lives of Grafton’s residents: “They helped each other in times of birth, sickness and death. In his book Historic Grafton: Uninhabited But Not Forgotten, historian Ronald L. Morris addresses the audience at the Grafton reunion on Sept. Standing next to a model of the Alonzo and Nancy Russell Home, historian Ronald L. census counted only seven families residing in Grafton. Only a few of the original settlers returned to live in Grafton in 18 U.S. For those two years before they were permitted to once again take up residence in their homes, farmers with plots in Grafton daily commuted several miles each way from Rockville to tend their land. In 1866, all villagers relocated to nearby Rockville because of a two-year mandate by President Young that all LDS people in southern Utah needed to be domiciled in communities with at least 150 men. Undeterred, the settlers moved a mile upstream and rebuilt Grafton.Īn 1864 Church census counted 168 Graftonians. The impetuous Virgin River flooded out Grafton in 1862, carrying away entire houses and destroying the town in the process. Russell between 18 for his wife Louisa and their six children. The original adobe fireplace still stands in the Louisa Foster Russell Home, a gabled wood structure built by Alonzo H.
Many of those families had crossed the plains as part of handcart teams some settled in a two-year-old town called Grafton approximately 30 miles east of St. In 1861 President Brigham Young, fearing a cotton shortage in the wake of the Civil War, called dozens of families to farm cotton in southern Utah.
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Over the last 150 years and interspersed with long periods of being completely uninhabited, Grafton has hosted a uniquely wide swath of humanity ranging from Church members of the humblest origins to Oscar-winning Hollywood movie stars. Nestled against Zion National Park, Grafton owns a rich history. He stayed in the home until 1945 when he and his wife, Mary Ellen, moved to St. Following the death of his father, Alonzo Russell, in 1910, Frank Russell bought the house for $200 and a cow. Featured is a side view of the Alonzo and Nancy Russell Home juxtaposed against the scenic backdrop of Mt. Grafton is situated in southern Utah just west of Zion National Park. They gather for an annual reunion and to remember the sacrifices their ancestors made while taming a volatile and often unforgiving wilderness. After that signs direct you to the site, as well as the town cemetery.Each autumn, descendants of early LDS pioneers return to Grafton, a ghost town in southern Utah. One should watch closely as they drive through Rockville for a street called Bridge Rd, which as the name suggests leads to a bridge that crosses the Virgin River. The access road to Grafton is not obvious from Hwy 9. The town site is maintained by the Grafton Heritage Partnership Project. Today several well preserved and maintained buildings, as well original orchards and pastures from the settlement remain. This lead families of the settlement to move to better locations on the other side of the river, where the modern towns of Springdale and Rockville are located. This caused constant problems with the irrigation system put in place to water the cotton. The location proved a poor choice, not only because of the threat of flooding from the Virgin River, but also because of the heavy silt load in the section of the river where Grafton was located. The town was originally founded in 1859 as a cotton growing project ordered by the president of the Mormon Church at that time, Brigham Young. Grafton is a ghost town, just outside of Zion National Park in Washington County, Utah. John was a farmer, cattle rancher and blacksmith. Pictured above is the former home of John and Ellen Wood.