Descendants of early Mormon pioneers gather for annual reunion

GRAFTON, Utah -- Each autumn, descendants of early Mormon pioneers return to Grafton, a ghost town in southern Utah. They gather for an annual reunion and to remember the sacrifices their ancestors made while taming a volatile and often unforgiving wilderness.

Nestled against Zion National Park, Grafton owns a rich history. Over the past 150 years and interspersed with long periods of being completely uninhabited, Grafton has hosted a uniquely wide swath of humanity ranging from Mormons of the humblest origins to Oscar-winning Hollywood movie stars.

Humble beginnings
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. Many of those families had crossed the plains as part of handcart teams; some settled in a 2-year-old town called Grafton approximately 30 miles east of St. George.

The impetuous Virgin River flooded out Grafton in 1862, carrying away entire houses and destroying the town in the process. Undeterred, the settlers moved a mile upstream and rebuilt Grafton.

An 1864 Mormon Church census counted 168 Graftonians. 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. 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. Only a few of the original settlers returned to live in Grafton in 1868; the 1870 U.S. census counted only seven families residing in Grafton.

In his book "Historic Grafton: Uninhabited But Not Forgotten," historian Ronald L. Morris summed up the lives of Grafton's residents: "They helped each other in times of birth, sickness and death. Money was scarce. Articles of necessity were made by hand or obtained by barter. Harvest time was a community social event. They found enjoyment in work, not in escape from it. Their homes at first were tents, wagon boxes, dugouts and log cabins. These were later replaced by adobe buildings and brick houses. Residents would meet on Sundays for worship and often during the week for other religious or social activities. Families enjoyed such activities as singing, dancing, making candy, popping corn, swimming, horseback riding, picnics, peach-cutting bees, husking bees, corn and chicken roasts, and melon busts."

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This story is provided by the LDS Church News, an official publication of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. It is produced weekly by the Deseret News.