As the seasons are changing, natural elements are dying, and the sun is moving into the winter cycle, but Grafton remains. An abandoned community, Grafton has its share of ghost tales.

Story goes, two young girls were on a swing tied to a tree, when at the peak of their sway the rope broke and they fell to their deaths. Their combined tombstone is in the nearby cemetery, and some say they still see their ghosts wandering around on moonlit nights.

There are a few remaining community buildings, including the renovated schoolhouse/church and residential home. Here you can imagine a small settlement growing cotton on the edge of the Virgin River in 1859, part of Brigham Young’s plan for Mormon self-sufficiency.

Grafton gradually became a ghost town as residents moved to Hurricane, or other nearby settlements, after years of losing crops to repeated floods. The last resident left in 1945. Grafton is now listed on the National Register of Historic Places. To learn more, visit www.graftonheritage.org/