The Walter Grover Historic Rock Home

The Walter Grover Historic Rock Home. . The original, small rock home at 630 North Main Street in Farmington, Utah, is one of many stone structures that helps set Farmington apart as a city with a distinguishing architectural heritage. The home was built in 1880 by Walter Grover as a gift for his mother, Elizabeth Walker Grover, a Mormon handcart pioneer who emigrated from England to Utah in 1856. Walter, Elizabeth's eldest child, was just 19 years old when he started and finished the construction of the small, two-room house. Building the home finally gave his mother - the sixth plural wife of Thomas Grover - a permanent residence for her and her four children. Walter received consent from his father, Thomas Grover, to build the home on the east end of the family farm., The farm was located on a plot of ground, which based on the earliest 1875 Davis County records, was first surveyed by Daniel W. Miller, one of Farmington's early settlers. The title to the land appears to have been sold to Thomas Grover around 1876 by either Thomas White or Daniel Miller., Walter began building the home by chopping logs in the Farmington canyons and hauling them to a Farmington sawmill. There, they were made into lumber for all the heavy beams and floors. Walter hauled rock from the foothills for the walls. To lay the stone for the walls, he made mortar by hauling very fine sand and clay from the shores of the Great Salt Lake, just west of Centerville., A stonemason was hired, either by Walter or his father, to lay the rock walls, which were built two feet thick - a necessary insulating technique used at the time to shield against cold and heat. Walter did all the shingling himself and most of the carpentry. Elizabeth's remark when Walter presented her with a finished home was, "It seems like heaven!" Elizabeth Grover lived in the home until all of her children, except the youngest were married. After the death of her husband in 1886, she moved to Logan., In 1938 a three-room rock addition was added to the house by Leo and Florence Manning. In the 1990s, Bob Sutton laid an additional foundation to further expand the footprint of the building to the north by several hundred square feet. In 2008, the home was preserved and restored by Bob Aamodt.