Iosepa Ghost Town

Grantsville, Utah

This was a settlement founded by Hawaiian Mormons in 1889, in the middle of the desolate Skull Valley. Originally, converts from Hawaii moved to Utah to join the Salt Lake Temple in Salt Lake city, but found themselves discriminated against, so they started their own outpost in the desert.

They built a town, planted trees, built a reservoir and made a go at it until 1917, when crops began to fail, and the people succumbed to disease. When a temple was built in Hawaii, they moved back home, leaving the town abandoned for the last century.