Iosepa, the Polynesian Colony

In the dry expanse of Skull Valley, there once stood a Hawaiian town. It was called Iosepa, the Hawaiian form of the name Joseph, and it was founded in August of eighteen eighty-nine by Polynesian converts to the Mormon church who had crossed the Pacific to live near the temples in Utah. The first forty-six settlers drew lots for their land, then built houses, a schoolhouse, a general store, and irrigation ditches carrying mountain water to fields of wheat, corn, and potatoes.

At its height the colony held more than two hundred people. But the desert was cruel to islanders. Summers baked them, winters froze them, and the cemetery sometimes grew faster than the town.

There was even a small outbreak of leprosy in the eighteen nineties. When the church announced a temple would be built in Hawaii, the settlers went home, and by nineteen seventeen Iosepa was abandoned. Today only the cemetery and this monument remain.