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Show OMB No . 1024-0015, NPS Form United States Department of the Interior National Park Service National Register of Historic Places Continuation Sheet Section No. ~ Page ~ Grafton Historic District, Rockville, Washington County, UT was organized on July 11, 1893. Each stockholder would be entitled to twenty acres of farmland up on the bench, thus providing plots for approximately one hundred young men. Wages for the construction workers were set at $2.00 per day, a significant step up from the money they could make at Grafton, although most of the workers took 25% of their payment in cash and 75% in stock (land). The canal and dam were finally finished in August of 1904. The 1910 census showed that ten families from Grafton , totaling forty-four people, had relocated to Hurricane. By 1920 those numbers had more than tripled to thirty-two families with 138 people. As families left Grafton they took their houses with them whenever possible. George Henry and Emily Hastings Wood moved their log house to Hurricane prior to 1910, havinm n stockholders in the canal company. Henry's nephew Andrew moved his house and barn (locate ~ 0 the extant John, Sr. and Emily Wood house) along with his family to Hurricane, as well, in 1911 .47 Th " people to leave Grafton were Minnie and LuWayne Russell, and Edward D. and Rhoda Ballard Jones 48 who owned the John , Sr., and Emily Wood house from 1920 until the spring of 1945. In 1944 the Joneses bought a two-room log cabin from Merrill and Agnes Russell that was located east of the Alonzo and Nancy Russell adobe home. They took the cabin with them when they moved to Rockville in the spring of 1945. 49 Grafton and the Movie Industry Grafton was the filming location for a number of movies beginning in 1929 with" In Old Arizona," the first talkie filmed outdoors. "The Arizona Kid' with Warner Baxter and Carole Lombard followed in 1930. Several of the local residents, including Vilo and Floyd DeMille, earned four dollars a day working as extras. "Ramrod' was filmed in 1947 with Joel McCrea , Veronica Lake, and Lloyd Bridges and several temporary buildings, including a hotel to the west of the schoolhouse, were con~~~cu.stjld for the set. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," starring Robert Redford and Paul Newman, was -:eerarGrafton in 1969. A small frame house was constructed for the movie at the southeast corner of East and North Streets and was later accidentally burned down by campers. "Child Bride of Short Creek" in 1981 and "The Red Fury" in 1984 were the last movies filmed in Grafton. 50 .No structures remain from the movie sets. Jo-utG~ Today the fOVm stands as a tribute to the men and women who built it and kept it alive for more than eighty years. The cultural resources that still remain are in varying stages of deterioration, but many of the buildings are fairly sound. Grafton is significant as a unique example of a frontier settlement that survived the hardships of the hostile and untamed West, yet was abandoned in the mid-twentieth century without having been significantly altered. The buildings appear largely as they did when they were erected, except for the effects of time and neglect. Unlike Grafton, other Mormon missionary settlements were either quickly abandoned, leaving very few visible remains behind, or they thrived and continue to survive today in a much altered state. Grafton should be preserved as an unparalleled example of a nineteenth-century frontier town . '\~ fOM-Ck..l~ 1D~~ ~CN·u9J,OL~60J.~C\.t~er~~~ ~-n-~ ~ , ~~'IV-~~ ()6~ ~~4~~~~~~~.±v·,~,,)~ 47 Wood , op. cit., p. 1 48 According to Vilo Jones DeMille, daughter of Edward and Rhoda Jones. 49 Platt, op. cit. , p. 111. 50 Grafton Heritage Partnership Project. 2001) pamphlet. "Historic Grafton ; A National Register Historic Site in Southwestern Utah." Undated (post • / \~b\0~ . 1tOt-t)O~~'\'lt ~lo ~~ ~ M:~ ~&~ec...~ ·~ t1~i ~ . ~ .1CW ~ \M ~ ~1w ~~1 \o~C:l ~ fu ~~ kV~0L&Q,.lc"T~V,~~-tQ~-\ . ~~~~~~~«-~ |
