Why do some communities thrive and grow and others struggle and eventually fail? Answering this complex question is one reason why ghost towns are so fascinating. Approximately two miles south of Zion National Park along the Virgin River sits Grafton, Utah — the most photographed ghost town in the western United States.
Grafton also has the distinction of being featured in several western movies, including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Currently the town has four restored structures and a cemetery, originally constructed by Mormon settlers. In the 1850s Brigham Young, a leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, began enlisting volunteers to secure land and resources in southern Utah. His goal was to create a self-sustaining faith community, and he believed the area along the Virgin River had the necessary attributes to grow cotton. Young was correct, and the region’s success growing cotton is why southwest Utah, to this day, is referred to as Dixie.
In 1959, shortly after Young’s call, the area around Grafton was settled by five Mormon families. The original settlement was washed out during the Great Flood of 1862 and relocated a mile up stream — where the restored town exist today. Although the native tribes were instrumental in the settler’s success, in 1866 regional conflicts arose over both resources and impacts the Mormon settlements had on the natural systems that sustained native people’s way of life. The Black Hawk War involved more than 150 individual battles with sixteen Ute, Southern Paiute, Apache and Navajo tribes led by the local Ute war chief Anotoga Black Hawk.
During the conflict Young relocated the residents of Grafton to the larger town of Rockville. Some residents continued to visit the Grafton area to tend to their crops.The conflict ended in 1867, but not all the residents returned. By the mid 1870s the local Southern Paiute tribe had abandoned their efforts to live off the land, and due to continual flooding and difficulties farming the land the Mormon population dwindled until 1944 when the last resident left Grafton.
The Grafton cemetery documents some of the harsh realities settlers faced. Six stones mark the graves of babies less than a year old. Other stones read: Mary Jane York, 28, died of Consumption (Tuberculosis), Byron Lee Bybee, 65, died of “poor health” and Joseph C. Field, 9, dragged to death by a horse. The image here shows a marker that records the death of a young couple in 1866 and reads: “Killed by Indians.” This happens to be the largest and most impressive marker in the cemetery. The cemetery is still maintained and many of the descendants of these settlers still live in the area today. What is eerily absent is a record of the native tribes, their abandoned community and lost way of life. This area could certainly be considered the site of two ghost towns.