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GRAFTON, Washington County — You may have distant relatives who settled there or you may have never have heard of it, but one group is trying to give the ghost town of Grafton a restorative makeover.
Grafton was settled in 1859 by Mormon pioneer families who were sent to Southern Utah as part of the Utah Cotton Mission, according to the Grafton Heritage Partnership Project website. The early settlers experimented with growing cotton in Utah's "Dixie" and were successful for several years.
However, in January 1862, a massive flood destroyed most of the town and the crops. Historians have told stories of a woman who lived in a wagon-box home right by the river and gave birth during the flooding, inspiring a local composer and musician to write a song about it.
In an effort to avoid further flooding, Grafton's settlers relocated to higher ground one mile upstream of their first town, where the current townsite now stands, the website said. However, continued flooding, conflicts with Native Americans and a lack of resources eventually forced the last settlers to leave Grafton in 1945.
"(They left because there was) no water, no power, no utilities," Grafton Heritage Partnership Project President Jane Whalen said. "Originally, what was happening is because the families were growing and there wasn't enough land to give to all the siblings ... so people slowly left. The school closed down in 1919 and there was only one family left in 1945."
Grafton became a well-known ghost town after it was deserted, and has been the site of several movies including "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."
However, many of the buildings began deteriorating over the years and several descendants of early settlers began efforts to restore them. The Grafton Heritage Partnership Project was established in 1996 and began fundraising and applying for grants to restore the historic structures, Whalen said.
"They were about to fall down, those buildings," she said. "We were in the nick of time to save the place, with a lot of effort from a lot of groups."
The area was added to the National Register of Historic Sites and the old schoolhouse has since been completely renovated. Enough money was raised to recently restore the roof of the Russell Home and efforts are continuing to renovate the rest of the interior and exterior of the building, Whalen said.
"It's a magical place to go out to," she said. "And it's fun to work on something that's permanent. It's permanent preservation. …When you know it's in perpetuity and it's so important, that's pretty exciting."
Anyone interested in donating to help restore the ghost town's historical buildings can do so on the website.
