Mormon Row Historic District

Mormon Row is the surviving homestead landscape of Grovont, an early farming community east of Blacktail Butte. Its houses, barns, corrals and fields sit on the sagebrush flats with the Teton Range beyond. Make time for both the north and south clusters if the settlement’s history interests you; the T.A. Moulton Barn is the famous photo stop, and several other family homesteads add the rest of the story.

At the south cluster, the T.A. Moulton Barn sits in front of the Tetons, with old fences and corrals completing the farm scene. Sunrise is the signature view and a popular time for photographers. Include some fence and meadow in the frame to keep the barn connected to its working-farm setting.

Mormon settlers came from Idaho in the 1890s and built their farms close together so they could share work and community support. The post office called the settlement Grovont. The park counts 27 homesteads in the district. Sagebrush signaled better soil, Blacktail Butte sheltered fields from wind, and the Gros Ventre River supplied water.

Settlers dug irrigation ditches by hand and horse between 1896 and 1937; some still carry water. John and T.A. Moulton initially grew grain on dry land. After irrigation reached the area in the late 1920s, John shifted to dairy and sold milk, cream and butter to nearby dude ranches. The barns make more sense when you picture this as a working farm landscape.

John and T.A. Moulton homesteaded here in 1908. John and Bartha lived in a small log cabin for 17 years before building the pink stucco house around 1934; T.A.’s barn took more than 30 years to finish. Farther south, the Andy Chambers Homestead has the district’s most extensive group of surviving buildings, including its windmill. Chambers claimed his land in 1912, and his family used the windmill to make electricity in 1946 before rural power reached them in the 1950s.

In 1930, the Snake River Land Company began buying homesteads in the area. Many settlers sold their land and secured lifetime leases; by the 1950s, few remained. The larger Mormon Row district entered the National Register of Historic Places in 1997, with the Chambers Homestead listed earlier in 1990. What survives lets you see the shift from a close-knit farming community to a preserved historic landscape.