Abandoned Towns
Grafton's adobe schoolhouse with its bell tower and the two-story adobe Russell home, behind a cedar-post fence, with red Zion peaks beyond

Farm and ranch town

Grafton

A Mormon farming town on the Virgin River that floods, silt and isolation emptied by 1944. Its schoolhouse and a handful of homes have been restored, and the townsite and cemetery are open to visitors.

37°10′02″N 113°04′48″W · ≈3,670 ft

Photo: Triberocker, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Open to visitors

The townsite is looked after by the Grafton Heritage Partnership, whose fall 2025 newsletter said of its open house on the grounds: "Anyone interested in attending is welcome." There are no services, water, power or toilets, and the partnership warns the dead-end road is impassable in a hard rainstorm. In March 2026 St. George News wrote of traffic "between Rockville and the Grafton Ghost Town" over the one-lane Rockville Bridge. Checked October 19, 2026, on graftonheritage.org.

Overview

A cotton town the river wore down

Pastures and cottonwoods on the road from Rockville to Grafton, April 2014
Pastures and cottonwoods on the road from Rockville to Grafton, April 2014 · Photo: Don Graham from Redlands, CA, USA - God bless it!, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

Grafton began in December 1859 as Wheeler, one of the settlements Brigham Young sent south to grow cotton. The Virgin River washed most of it away in January 1862, and the settlers rebuilt a mile upstream under a new name. By 1864 about 28 families farmed about an acre each here. They dug irrigation ditches and planted orchards, some of which still stand.

Farming here was hard. Clogged ditches had to be dredged at least weekly, far more often than in other settlements, and Grafton was the only settlement on the south bank, cut off from its neighbors. In 1866, during the Black Hawk War, the whole town moved to Rockville. People came back, but floods kept driving families across the river. Four families were left by 1890, the church branch closed in 1921, and the last residents left in 1944.

Film crews found it next. Scenes from In Old Arizona (1929) and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) were shot here. Since June 1997 the Grafton Heritage Partnership, with former residents, the Utah State Historical Society and the BLM, has restored the schoolhouse and several homes. It also bought 150 acres of farmland, kept in pasture to preserve the town's farming look.

Video

Grafton in 30 seconds

A Mormon farming town on the Virgin River: the river in 1929, cabins and fences, the cemetery below the Zion peaks and the restored schoolhouse.

Photos via Wikimedia Commons: Don Graham from Redlands, CA, USA - God bless it! (CC BY-SA 2.0), George A. Grant (public domain), Jeff Turner from Santa Clarita, CA, United States (CC BY 2.0), Don Graham from Redlands, CA, USA - God bless it! (CC BY-SA 2.0), Triberocker at English Wikipedia (public domain). Original music; narration by Google Gemini text-to-speech, with captions.

Timeline

Eighty-five years of Grafton

Grafton across the Virgin River, with washed-out banks in the foreground, September 6, 1929. Photo by George A. Grant, National Park Service
Grafton across the Virgin River, with washed-out banks in the foreground, September 6, 1929. Photo by George A. Grant, National Park Service · Photo: George A. Grant, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
  1. Settlers from Virgin led by Nathan Tenney start a cotton-growing settlement called Wheeler on the Virgin River, part of Brigham Young's southern Utah cotton project.
  2. The Great Flood of 1862 largely destroys Wheeler. The settlers rebuild about a mile upriver and name the new town after Grafton, Massachusetts.
  3. About 28 families live in Grafton, each farming about an acre. They dig irrigation ditches and plant orchards.
  4. Grafton serves as Kane County seat from January 1866 to January 12, 1867. During the Black Hawk War the whole town moves to Rockville. The heritage partnership counts 13 deaths that year, from diphtheria, scarlet fever, a broken swing and a raid in which Navajo raiders killed three members of the Berry family.
  5. Families move back to stay. Through the evacuation they had come back daily to work their fields, by Legends of America's account.
  6. A county boundary change moves Grafton into Washington County.
  7. Residents build the two-story adobe schoolhouse, also used as church, meeting hall and dance hall. The last classes are held in 1918–19.
  8. Four families remain. Floods and silted ditches have pushed most people across the river.
  9. The local branch of the LDS church is discontinued, the date usually given for the town's end.
  10. The last residents leave.
  11. Scenes for Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid are filmed here.
  12. The Grafton Heritage Partnership forms to protect and restore the townsite.

What's left

What you'll see

A log cabin and a weathered wooden house behind a cedar-post fence, June 2009
A log cabin and a weathered wooden house behind a cedar-post fence, June 2009 · Photo: Jeff Turner from Santa Clarita, CA, United States, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0

The two-story adobe schoolhouse of 1886 served as school, church and dance hall. Nearby stand the Russell home, an adobe house from about 1888 where Alonzo Russell died in 1910; the 1879 log home he built for his wife Louisa; the Wood home with its log barn, granary and split-rail fence; and the Ballard home and barn from about 1907. Some of the settlers' orchards survive.

Ownership is split. The partnership's fall 2025 newsletter says Washington County owns the schoolhouse, the partnership owns the Russell home and the pastures around town, and the Attiyeh Foundation owns the Louisa Russell home, the Wood home and the Ruby Rose cabin, a log cabin moved here in 1947 for the film Ramrod and rebuilt in 2020.

The cemetery is on the left of the road just before the town. The partnership believes it holds 74 to 84 graves, many now without headstones, of Russell, Wood, Ballard, Berry and York family members and of Southern Paiute people. In the historic maps below, the 1953 sheet names Grafton on the Virgin River west of Rockville, and the 1999 sheet shows its buildings, two lanes and the cemetery ("Cem") south of town. The 1885 and 1891 surveys of the area label Virgin City and Rockville but not Grafton.

  • Schoolhouse and meeting hall (1886)
  • Russell home (c. 1888)
  • Louisa Russell log home (1879)
  • Wood home, barn and granary
  • Ballard home and barn (c. 1907)
  • Ruby Rose cabin (moved 1947, rebuilt 2020)
  • Cemetery with the Berry headstone enclosure
  • Fields and old orchards
USGS topographic map of Grafton on the south bank of the Virgin River
USGS The National Map, topo. Grafton on the south bank of the Virgin River, with SR 9 on the north side and 250 South leading off below.
Aerial view of green fields and tree rows inside a bend of the Virgin River, with the highway along the top
Aerial imagery, same area. Fields and tree rows south of the river's bends; SR 9 runs along the top.

Cemetery

The Grafton cemetery

The wooden headboard of James Jasper York, who died of diphtheria on January 25, 1866, aged 5, October 2007
The wooden headboard of James Jasper York, who died of diphtheria on January 25, 1866, aged 5, October 2007 · Photo: mandj98, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0
Old headstones in the cemetery below sandstone ledges and the Zion peaks, April 2014
Old headstones in the cemetery below sandstone ledges and the Zion peaks, April 2014 · Photo: Don Graham from Redlands, CA, USA - God bless it!, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0

The partnership manages the cemetery under a cooperative management agreement with the BLM. The agreement lets it replace the fence with like-kind materials, repair the wooden enclosure around the Berry headstone near the center, and add signs on pioneer and Southern Paiute history. Leave the markers as they are.

Historic maps

Grafton on USGS maps, 1953–1999

Crops from the USGS Historical Topographic Map Collection, centered on the townsite. Each sheet shows what surveyors mapped that year; compare them with today's topo and aerial on this page.

USGS topographic map around Grafton, 1953
Cedar City sheet, 1953, 1:250,000 · U.S. Geological Survey, public domain · catalog record

Day trip

Plan a day trip to Grafton from Springdale

Take it with you

Day trip itinerary

The essentials, the sample day with boxes to tick, what to photograph and the coordinates, on two printable pages. Handy where there's no signal.

Download the PDF (568 KB)

Grafton is about 20 minutes from Springdale, so it fits around a day in Zion. The site is small: a schoolhouse, a handful of homes and a cemetery. There are no services, so bring water and plan restroom stops in Springdale.

A sample day

  1. Drive from Springdale through Rockville and across the Bridge Road bridge.
  2. Walk the schoolhouse and the Russell, Wood and Ballard homes.
  3. Visit the cemetery, then head back to Springdale and Zion.

What to photograph and film

  • Schoolhouse and Russell home together. From the road, the bell tower and the two-story adobe line up with the Zion peaks behind, as in the photo at the top of this page.
  • Fences and cabins. Old cedar-post fences make a foreground for the log cabins and the Wood place's split-rail fence.
  • The cemetery. Low light brings out the worn lettering on the old stones.

Map & directions

Getting there

Springdale, at the Zion entrance, is the nearest town. Drive west on SR 9 through Rockville, turn south on Bridge Road, cross the Virgin River and follow Grafton Road to the townsite. From St. George, take I-15 north and SR 9 east through Hurricane and La Verkin.

USGS topographic map between Springdale, Rockville and Grafton with the route drawn on it

Base map: USGS The National Map (public domain). Routes: OSRM on © OpenStreetMap contributors data (ODbL), computed October 2026. Times assume dry roads.

From Zion Park Boulevard in Springdale7.0 miabout 18 min
  1. Head southwest on Zion Park Boulevard, SR 9, into Rockville, where it becomes East Main Street.3.6 mi
  2. Turn left onto Bridge Road and cross the Virgin River.0.3 mi
  3. Bear right onto Grafton Road and continue as it becomes 250 South.2.9 mi
  4. Bear right to the townsite.0.3 mi
Google Maps directionsApple MapsOpenStreetMap

Road and safety notes

  • Bridge Road crosses the Virgin River on the one-lane Rockville Bridge, a steel truss bridge opened in 1924. UDOT inspects it every two years; St. George News reported possible minor delays for the March 19, 2026, inspection.
  • Past the bridge the route is a dead-end road, and Legends of America says the pavement soon ends. The heritage partnership warns it is impassable in a hard rainstorm.
  • There is no water, power or toilet at Grafton. Bring water, especially in summer.
  • Fuel and food are in Springdale and Hurricane.

Photos

Grafton in photos

Visitor reports

Been to Grafton?

Been there lately? Tell the next visitor what you found: whether you could get in, the state of the road and what's still standing. Photos are welcome. We read every report before it appears here.

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Nearby

Other sites near Grafton

Straight-line distance from the townsite to other mapped sites in our Utah index.

Sources

Sources and credits

  1. ghosttowns.com, "Grafton": fact sheet fields (roads, climate, best time).
  2. Wikipedia, "Grafton, Utah", retrieved October 2026: founding, 1862 flood, families, ditches and isolation, county seat, 1866 evacuation, decline, 1921 and 1944 dates, films, the partnership and its 150 acres of farmland, coordinates.
  3. Legends of America, "Grafton", updated September 2026: the 1868 return, the 1886 schoolhouse, film use, and the drive in from Rockville, where the pavement ends.
  4. Grafton Heritage Partnership, historic features, read October 19, 2026: building dates, the Ruby Rose cabin, the 13 deaths of 1866 and their causes, James Jasper York's death, cemetery graves and families, BLM agreement and planned work.
  5. Grafton Heritage Partnership, "Grafton News Fall 2025", posted November 3, 2025: the open house on the grounds, and who owns the schoolhouse, homes and pastures.
  6. Grafton Heritage Partnership, directions: route via Bridge Road, rain warning, no services, as of October 19, 2026.
  7. St. George News, "Traffic delays possible as historic Rockville Bridge undergoes UDOT inspection", March 18, 2026: the one-lane bridge on the way to Grafton, its 1924 opening and its two-year UDOT inspections.
  8. Coordinates: Wikipedia (from USGS GNIS). Elevation: USGS 3D Elevation Program point query. Routes: OSRM on OpenStreetMap data, October 2026.

Photo and map credits