The story
Iosepa ('Joseph' in Hawaiian) was founded in 1889 by Native Hawaiian converts to the LDS Church who had gathered to Utah and, facing prejudice in Salt Lake City, built their own colony in arid Skull Valley. Against every expectation they made it work — irrigated fields, tidy streets with Hawaiian names, even a prize from the state for its civic beauty in 1911, all while enduring hardship as harsh as any homestead story, including a handful of Hansen's disease cases the settlers cared for themselves.
When the church announced a temple at Lā'ie in 1915, most colonists chose to return to the islands; by 1917 the valley was empty again. The cemetery remains lovingly kept, and every Memorial Day hundreds of Pacific Islanders gather there — a vanished town with one of the most alive traditions of any site in this atlas.
What remains today
The fenced cemetery with its pavilion, townsite foundations and street traces, and interpretive markers.
From the archives
Iosepa turns up on 20 digitized newspaper pages from Utah — read them free in the Library of Congress's Chronicling America collection.
Source: Library of Congress digital collections.
Questions from the field
- Why did Hawaiians settle in Skull Valley?
- Hawaiian Latter-day Saints who had gathered to Utah founded Iosepa in 1889 to build a community of their own; it lasted until a temple in Hawai‘i (announced 1915) drew most families home.
From the field
The most valuable part of this record is the part only visitors can write.
Stamp your passport
Check in at Iosepa — GPS-verified visits earn an inked stamp.
File a field report
Road conditions, what's still standing, what's gone — your report joins the record.
Add photographs
Credited, dated, and preserved as part of Iosepa's permanent record.
No field reports yet — sign in to file the first.
Primary sources for this record
- — USGS GNIS feature 1455148
- — Iosepa Historical Association / annual gathering records
- — Utah State Historical Society — Iosepa