Backroad Odyssey : Travel, Van Life & Lost Locations
Traveling America's backroads, history and road trip enthusiasts - Noah and Noodles - unearth fascinating locations overlooked while traveling.
Living out of a van, they research and visit each story location to share the (often shocking) secrets held within.
If you love travel, history and thoughtful storytelling - join us on the road!
Backroad Odyssey : Travel, Van Life & Lost Locations
America's Ghost Towns - Why Did They Leave?
Abandoned towns are scattered throughout the American Landscape.
These remnants of bygone eras tempt us to speculate about the lives of those that left …
Why did they leave?
What makes the American West particularly populated with these so-called “Ghost Towns?”
Noodles and I explore the desolate ghost town of Grafton - just south of Zion National Park - to find out!
Recommendations:
Good reference before visiting Grafton, the detour shouldn't take you more than two hours:
https://graftonheritage.org/history-settlement/
Zion Hikes:
https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/utah/the-zion-narrows-riverside-walk
https://www.alltrails.com/trail/us/utah/angels-landing-trail
Don't Forget Utah's Mighty 5 (easily doable if you plan!)
https://www.visitutah.com/places-to-go/parks-outdoors/the-mighty-5
Works Cited:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/20589495?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/24889487.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A69f9058b1c2537ad4427f269f32fac60&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&initiator=&acceptTC=1
https://www.jstor.org/stable/41784569?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
https://www.jstor.org/stable/44671309?searchText=ghost+towns&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dghost%2Btowns%26so%3Drel&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&refreqid=fastly-default%3Aa083d002fc7d91c16babbaf915c2cd7d&seq=2
https://graftonheritage.org/history-settlement/
https://www.britannica.com/topic/ghost-town
https://travel.usnews.com/gallery/americas-15-coolest-ghost-towns-to-visit?slide=16
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7G2DRrxbtE
https://www.legendsofamerica.com/gt-hiddentales/
Noah and Noodles here!
We want to extend a heartfelt thanks to every listener of Backroad Odyssey.
Your support fuels our passion and inspires us to keep sharing stories and discover overlooked locations.
Follow each adventure visually at:
https://www.instagram.com/backroadsodyssey/
Cruisin' down the street. I wonder where this road would lead. So many possibilities. Care to share what you think. Oh, noon Dolls, what do you see? Back Road, odyssey road on its seat?
Speaker 1:Abandoned towns are scattered throughout the American landscape. These remnants of bygone eras tempt us to speculate about the lives of those that left. Why did they leave that left? Why did they leave? And what makes the American West particularly populated with these so-called ghost towns? To find out, my dog Noodles and I take the van to the desolate ghost town of Grafton, just south of Zion National Park. The paved road to Grafton just ended. We're driving now the dirt road to a place people once called home, but that was then, and this is now Now. The only evidence of activity around Grafton are the vacant buildings scattered throughout the sparse landscape we're headed to.
Speaker 1:We'll start with two questions. One, we all have an image in our head of the quintessential American ghost town, but how much do we really know about the reasons behind the abandonment of all of these towns? And two, as always, we have to start somewhere. What is a ghost town? The air here tastes of sparseness and the graveyard stones are undecorated. Charles Tomlinson Two Views of Two Ghost Towns. At its most basic, the ghost town is an abandoned settlement that still possesses visible infrastructure, tangible remains, echoes of life being lived. These ambiguous remnants could be anything from once thriving industrial hubs to solitary mining outposts. Whatever the exact reason for its abandonment, a common thread weaves through the stories of every single American ghost town, and that is this All economic activity that, once sustained, the town ceases to exist. What's going just stops Westward, ever westward. Henry Wells Ghost towns have become synonymous with imaginings of the American West.
Speaker 1:Why, what's the deal in this space at this time? Throughout the 19th century, america was largely guided by the following collection of words Expansion, growth, further Expansion. From the 30s and 40s onwards, there was a general awareness in America of the vastness of this new, dubiously acquired, I'll add land and a sharp sense of the potential of this land for its well, its possible population growth, its general opportunity. This awareness prompted a breakneck pace of westward expansion for decades upon decades, because we all know you weren't the only one eyeing opportunities out west. No, it was fair game. If you head West, the expectation became, you can strike it rich, you can find cheap land, you can do what you otherwise could not where you currently lived, and some met success, but most did not.
Speaker 1:This aggressive expansionist mentality provoked a boom-or-bust cycle. Entire towns were being built with little to no regard for their long-term survival. In some cases they left so quickly that they left the dirty dishes on the table. Author Kenneth Jessen. So I'll ask again what are the specific reasons for leaving a perfectly good town? We just explored one? Rapid westward expansion. New town populations would grow quickly and decline quicker as opportunities arose elsewhere. We've covered that, so we'll go to reason two Flimsy economic foundations.
Speaker 1:Many ghost towns were established around valuable but limited resources. When this limited valuable resource gold, coal, what have you was depleted, the town's entire economic foundation just basically collapsed. They had nothing else going for them. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, as they say. Let's move on to reason three Lack of basic infrastructure. These towns were often hastily created and often in the middle of nowhere, so infrastructure that would otherwise aid in steady population growth didn't exist, was too expensive or flat out not possible to implement. Kind of going off this.
Speaker 1:The 1800s are synonymous with change. Newer, faster railroads were constantly created. Resource pipelines to towns were altered. It was just unpredictable. So you could establish a town on a well-traveled route and that very same route would not be well-traveled within a decade. Finally, your basic natural disasters could damage towns to the point where it simply wasn't worth taking the time and the resources to repair everything. What's in common with every reason we've mentioned is this the cost of staying mentally, financially, socially, was all around just too high. Best, most thought to leave and to cut your losses and find fortunes elsewhere. It was easy enough to do so Westward, ever westward. Take care to sell your horse before he dies. The art of life is passing losses on. Robert Frost, what starts as a prairie becomes a boomtown and once again returns to prairie. Such is the story of hundreds of abandoned towns in the fate of our destination today Grafton, utah.
Speaker 1:Well, here we are, noodles and I are walking down what I can only assume is Main Street. There's only one street. A building to my left served as simultaneously a church, a school and a town hall. Both ahead and behind me are similarly sized buildings. I've got to say before I say anything, it's beautiful. Here Again, we're at the border of Zion, so aesthetically I absolutely see why you'd settle here. The red rock mountains, the blue sky, unique landscapes. The Red Rock Mountains, the blue sky, unique landscapes, but aesthetics I'd imagine were low on the list in the city planning of 19th century America. There, then, were most definitely other reasons to settle in Grafton, and, believe you me, we are going to find out what they are. But before we do, we're going to ask ourselves one other question.
Speaker 1:Behind every abandoned church, slash, school, slash town hall, there's a very human story. Choices were made, desires chased to make them, brick by brick, panel by panel, and now they're empty. They're solitary buildings. Does this building's later abandonment cheapen the effort put into constructing it? Or is the act of trying to build something noble in itself? I wonder what was going through the minds of the population of Grafton as they left their homes behind.
Speaker 1:The story of Grafton is actually quite unique in the long list of the tales of American ghost towns. To start, where most ghost towns started, as mining towns, basically settlements built alongside mineral deposits, grafton was founded for religious reasons and serves as a rare example of an agricultural ghost town. To understand, we need context. Let's go back in time. The year is 1847. A group of weary pioneers stand at Emigration Canyon looking out at the valley of the Great Salt Lake. These are the Mormons and the city they establish in that valley and eventual dispersal of Mormons and Mormon thought lead directly to our little town that couldn't, grafton. Here is how, between 1847 and 1900, mormons established a series of some 500 towns in a bid to claim territory and to secure resources for self-sufficiency. They wanted to cut themselves off. Grafton was one of these towns.
Speaker 1:In 1859, nathan Tenney leads five families to a site one mile downstream of today's Grafton. We'll call it Pre-Grafton. The idea in establishing Pre-Grafton and the remaining 499 towns is to grow both cotton and crops for eating. But importantly, I should add this it was and remains a desert. So attempted farming around the newly established pre-Grafton was hard, thankless and often didn't work. And all of this thankless work was soon wiped away by disaster. The houses in Old Grafton came floating down with the furniture, clothing and other property of the inhabitants, some of which was hauled out of the water, including three barrels of molasses, a resident and witness of a nearby town. From no water to too much water, life's wild. In 1862, a raging flood destroys Pre-Grafton. The few living there are forced to relocate to higher ground one mile upstream, and this is where the current town site now stands. We'll call it Grafton. Still here at Grafton it was the same story Hard, thankless work in the desert In 1866, grafton becomes a ghost town for the first time.
Speaker 1:I'll repeat that, for the first time. Here's what happened. Many settlers routinely disregarded territory inhabited by the southern Paiute people, and when already scarce resources are challenged, conflict is inevitable After killings on both sides. Brigham Young, the leader of the Mormons at the time and former governor of the Utah Territory that's a story for another day. Orders villages in southern Utah, where Grafton is to coalesce into towns of at least 150 people, and Grafton didn't nearly have that much. So the town is simply abandoned. Time passes, the order is revoked, People begin to trickle back down into Grafton At its peak, something like 200 people live in the town. But hard work and stubbornness can only get you so far when your surroundings are simply against you. Years pass and limited irrigation, poor climate, lack of infrastructure all push people away slowly but inevitably. People away slowly but inevitably. In 1944, the last residents leave Grafton, leaving behind not only the shells of buildings once inhabited but a long and a rich history of people trying to make it work.
Speaker 1:I'm inside what's called the Russell home right now. It's right alongside the church, slash school slash townhouse. You can tell it's been repaired on the outside and the inside, but the spirit, the general feeling you get while walking inside and on Main Street for that matter remains the same. You know, I used to photograph houses for a living and I always had to go into empty houses, and the feeling is a little similar here. You know, you feel like you're intruding inside something that's not yours, like the owners of this house could walk in at any moment. But now you know, I know, you know that's not the case. No one's called this home in almost a century. And I know, again it's only brick and lumber that I'm walking through, but again it just feels significant. It's a place that was cherished, that was lived in, it was a home.
Speaker 1:On the surface, ghost towns are abandoned buildings, nothing special. So with that thought, let's ask ourselves this question why are we so fascinated by them? Why do ghost towns endure in the public imagination? We're back on the dirt road, only this time we're heading away from Grafton. Here's some questions I've been asking myself over and over since we first started walking the main street of Grafton. Why should you or I take the time to visit a town that everybody chose to leave, everyone left. What do we have to gain by visiting? Here's my shot at an answer.
Speaker 1:Ghost towns, for all their dark allure, all their mystery, are, at their core, kind of echoes of our most basic wants and desires the need for community, for security, for comfort. Maybe what fascinates us most about ghost towns is kind of the ripping apart of that desire, of those desires, desires. Stopping to witness people trying to make it and failing long ago, reminds us just how easily everything can be taken away. Maybe, then, to visit a ghost town is to learn to love and appreciate what we have at this time, in this moment that's. I don't know. That's my shot at an answer. But now, with Grafton fading back into the landscape, I can only imagine the families of Grafton looking back, but where I'm a visitor right now, they were driving away from their lives, from their homes, hopes, dreams. It's a scene that was all too common out here in the American West.
Speaker 1:In one sense, american ghost towns are remnants of greed, right Claim land, grab resources, deplete those resources and go on. But Grafton illustrates another, a more complex side to the making and the creation of America's ghost towns. At some times and in some cases, there would be religious reasons, agricultural reasons, familial reasons, natural disasters would strike human factors, life factors would happen. All of this influences your decision to move to a town and then to move away. We asked ourselves at the beginning a simple question what is a ghost town? We know by now, and I hope you agree, that they're more than just empty buildings. So let me venture at an answer. Empty buildings, so let me venture at an answer. Ghost towns.
Speaker 1:From Grafton to the 4,000 plus additional abandoned towns in the United States are letters from the past, letters both encouraging ambition and warning against greed, promoting risk and cautioning against it, embracing both what we can build together and lose together. At the end of this, going to Grafton, all the research, I know one thing for sure these relics, these letters, they're worth taking the time to read. It's Noah here. Thank you for listening to Backroad Odyssey. Let's get right into recommendations. Grafton is something like a 15-minute drive from Zion National Park, absolutely worth your time. If you're in the area Shouldn't be more than an hour and a half detour for you. Zion is an absolute must while you're there. It's gorgeous just to drive around the park, but if you like to hike, it's one of the most unique landscapes. To do so, I'll include links in the show notes to Angel's Landing and the Narrows and a quick little behind the scenes of this episode.
Speaker 1:So the very night after I recorded the on-location recordings at Grafton, I got to my campsite in the desert and quickly became the sickest I've ever been in my life for two days straight without heat. I was freezing, cold, ran out of propane. So, yeah, I didn't explore much as I usually would. I was preoccupied. But beyond that I'll say this If you're going to Zion, please, please, please consider checking out the rest of Utah's Mighty Five, basically five amazing national parks in southern Utah, right next to each other. You've got Arches, you've got Canyonlands, capitol Reef Check out our Capitol Reef petroglyph episode if you're curious. Bryce Canyon and, of course, zion Really close together, really doable if you plan it right. With that said, if you find value in the effort that we put into each episode, into visiting the locations, doing the research it helps us continue to do what we're doing. If you rate and review wherever you're listening now, always genuinely appreciate it on my side. Thank you, be good to each other. Where to next? Backroad Odyssey.
