Utah · Ghost town
Iosepa
A Polynesian town in the Utah desert, lived in from 1889 to 1917, with a cemetery that is still visited every year.
Position Tooele County, Utah · 40.5419, -112.7339
Iosepa sits in Skull Valley about seventy five miles southwest of Salt Lake City. It was founded in 1889 by more than two hundred Polynesian members of the Latter-day Saint church, mostly Hawaiians, who had come to Utah and were settled here on ground nobody else wanted.
They made it work for nearly thirty years. There was a town plan, a water system, farms, a brass band. The place was abandoned in 1917 when the church announced a temple in Hawaii and most residents went home.
What remains is the cemetery, a monument and the outlines of streets in the sagebrush. Unlike a mining ghost town this one is not neglected: descendants hold an annual gathering here every Memorial Day weekend, and the site is cared for.
Go quietly. This is a burial ground with living relatives, not an attraction.
Facts checked against the Wikipedia article Iosepa, Utah. The words above are ours.