Mormon Row

Homesteaders established 27 homesteads in the Grovont area to take advantage of relatively fertile soil.

Plan Around Mormon Row

A good stop is not just something to read about. Once it belongs on the day, move into a saved trip and build the route around it.

Add to trip View park guide

Use this detail page to confirm that the stop is worth it, then carry that decision into a trip draft while the park context is still fresh.

Mormon Row Details

Leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, sent parties from the Salt Lake Valley to modern-day Wyoming to establish new communities and support an expanding population. Mormon homesteaders, who settled east of Blacktail Butte near the turn of the 19th century, clustered their farms to share labor and community, in stark contrast to the isolation typical of many western homesteads. These settlers first arrived in the 1890s from Idaho establishing a community (named Grovont by the U.S. Post Office) known today as "Mormon Row." Homesteaders established 27 homesteads in the Grovont area because of relatively fertile soil, shelter from winds by Blacktail Butte, and access to the Gros Ventre River. Despite the harsh conditions of Jackson Hole, Mormon settlers grew crops by using irrigation. These hardy settlers dug ditches by hand and with teams of horses, building an intricate network of levees and dikes to funnel water from central ditches to their fields between 1896 and 1937. Water still flows in some of these ditches.

Difficulty

Low

Distance

N/A

Estimated time

Region

U.S. 89/191