Grover is an

unincorporated community An unincorporated area is a region that is not governed by a local municipal corporation. Widespread unincorporated communities and areas are a distinguishing feature of the United States and Canada. Most other countries of the world either have ...

in southwestern Wayne County,

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

, United States. Originally known as Carcass Creek, Grover is a small ranching community off the county's main recreational corridor.

Geography

Grover lies some southeast of Torrey, on State Route 12. It sits just outside

Dixie National Forest Dixie National Forest is a United States National Forest in Utah with headquarters in Cedar City. It occupies almost two million acres (8,000 km²) and stretches for about across southern Utah. The largest national forest in Utah, it st ...

, at the northeastern flank of Boulder Mountain. To the east is

Capitol Reef National Park Capitol Reef National Park is an American national park in south-central Utah. The park is approximately long on its northsouth axis and just wide on average. The park was established in 1971 to preserve of desert landscape and is open all ye ...

. The community is small and scattered, but roughly bounded by two small streams, tributaries of the

Fremont River The Fremont River is a long river in southeastern Utah, United States that flows from the Johnson Valley Reservoir, which is located on the Wasatch Plateau near Fish Lake, southeast through Capitol Reef National Park to the Muddy Creek near Ha ...

. Fish Creek is on the west, Carcass Creek on the east. Carcass Creek was so named due to its steep banks, which proved hazardous to livestock. The former State Route 117 runs west and north from Grover to Teasdale, another small unincorporated community whose

post office A post office is a public facility and a retailer that provides mail services, such as accepting letters and parcels, providing post office boxes, and selling postage stamps, packaging, and stationery. Post offices may offer additional ser ...

serves Grover.

History

The first settlers on Carcass Creek were experienced Wayne County ranchers who arrived in 1880. In 1881, more cattlemen settled along Fish Creek. A small number of residents scattered through the area over the next few years. These early settlers referred to their settlement as Carcass Creek. In 1887, the

Mormon Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into severa ...

residents were organized into a congregation called the Carcass Creek

Branch A branch, sometimes called a ramus in botany, is a woody structural member connected to the central trunk of a tree (or sometimes a shrub). Large branches are known as boughs and small branches are known as twigs. The term ''twig'' usually ...

, although meetings were held only irregularly due to the distances among homes. In the early 1890s the growing town was granted a post office, and the name was changed to ''Grover'' in honor of U.S. President

Grover Cleveland Stephen Grover Cleveland (March 18, 1837June 24, 1908) was an American lawyer and politician who served as the 22nd and 24th president of the United States from 1885 to 1889 and from 1893 to 1897. Cleveland is the only president in American ...

. The Grover Irrigation Company organized in 1893 to build and manage structures for drawing and distributing water from Fish Creek Lake. The first school classes were held in the winter of 1892–1893, and the first log school/church/community building was built about 1900. In 1935, a new school building was built in Grover. A stuccoed log

one-room school One-room schools, or schoolhouses, were commonplace throughout rural portions of various countries, including Prussia, Norway, Sweden, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Spain. In most rural and s ...

, the Grover School was built with funds and labor provided mainly by the

Works Progress Administration The Works Progress Administration (WPA; renamed in 1939 as the Work Projects Administration) was an American New Deal agency that employed millions of jobseekers (mostly men who were not formally educated) to carry out public works projects, i ...

. Unlike other area schools, it had a fence and lawn. Due to Grover's small size, the school board quickly decided the school was an unnecessary expense; within three years the older children were sent to school in Bicknell, and in 1941 the Grover School was closed. The building has remained largely intact, and in 1986 it was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic ...

Demographics

Even for sparsely populated Wayne County, Grover has always been a small community with few inhabitants. Through all the years that it was enumerated as a census precinct in the United States Census, from 1900 to 1950, the population never reached 100. The annual

Fourth of July Independence Day (colloquially the Fourth of July) is a federal holiday in the United States commemorating the Declaration of Independence, which was ratified by the Second Continental Congress on July 4, 1776, establishing the United States ...

celebration in Grover has become a reunion of current and former residents; in 1973 the number of attendees was "more than 200".

Economy

Like much of Wayne County, Grover's economy traditionally depended on ranching, but has been supplemented in recent decades by the tourist trade from Capitol Reef National Park and other regional recreation. The scenic location has become an attractive place for

vacation home A holiday cottage, holiday home, vacation home, or vacation property is accommodation used for holiday vacations, corporate travel, and temporary housing often for less than 30 days. Such properties are typically small homes, such as cottag ...

s. The Hale Family Theatre, one of several theater companies run by the family of Ruth Hale, produces plays through the summer months in a rustic barn theater at the family's Grover ranch.

Education

Since the closure of the Grover School in 1941, Grover has had no schools of its own. Children attend school in Bicknell and

Loa ( ), also called loa or loi, are spirits in the African diasporic religion of Haitian Vodou. They have also been incorporated into some revivalist forms of Louisiana Voodoo. Many of the lwa derive their identities in part from deities venerat ...

References

External links

Wayne County Communities
{{authority control Unincorporated communities in Utah Unincorporated communities in Wayne County, Utah