St. George Trip-Day 01

Last weekend we traveled down to St. George for some fun, hiking and & quality time with some of Marq's family. On Saturday a bunch of us went exploring and ended up in Grafton, UT, an old ghost town. The town was established in 1859, to provide a settlement for people to grow cotton on the fertile plains next to the Virgin River. Frequent floods and Indian attacks caused problems for early pioneers who moved away to better land in Hurricane in the 1930's.
The town site still includes a two-storey private residence and a combined church/schoolhouse built in 1886. Some parts of the former village are fenced off but it was still pretty authentic, with peaceful surroundings and high, colorful cliffs providing a dramatic backdrop. Grafton's overwhelming beauty has been captured in a few movies including Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, which was filmed at the site in 1969.

My favorite part was the Grafton Cemetery.
There are a few dozen graves from the period 1860 - 1910, with telling inscriptions that give some insight into the harsh life at that time, such as the three Berry brothers (and one wife), all killed by Indians on April 2nd 1866, or the five children of John and Charlotte Ballard, all of whom died young between 1865 and 1877, none living for more than 9 years.