Anderson-Clark Farmstead

About this property

The Anderson–Clark Farmstead, located at 378 W. Clark St. in Grantsville, Utah, also known as the J. Reuben Clark Farm, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2006. The listing included 13 contributing buildings on 3.2 acres (1.3 ha). It is historically significant for association with Grantsville's agricultural development, for association with the Anderson and Clark families, and for its "distinctive collection of agricultural outbuildings". The farmhouse was built in 1941; 12 outbuildings were built from 1880 to 1944. The J. Reuben Clark Historic Farm was first owned by James McBride, founder of Grantsville, Utah. Swedish LDS convert immigrants, Charles L. and Ellen O. Anderson later bought the farm from him in the 1880s. In 1914, J. Reuben Clark, Jr., a Grantsville farm boy who grew up to serve in the administrations of seven U.S. Presidents, as U.S. Ambassador to Mexico, and as long-serving member of the LDS First Presidency, purchased the farm and most people now know it as the “Clark Farm.” The farm is listed on the National Register of Historic Places and anchors the west end of a historic district in the area of the original Grantsville fort. As a teenager in 1862, Charles Anderson emigrated with his family from Sweden. His family, who had been well-off in Sweden, arrived in the Salt Lake Valley with nothing, and a Brother Baker from Grantsville met up with them in Salt Lake and took them home with him. They settled in “Swedenberg,” a nickname for the southwest part of Grantsville. When he was 19, Charles drove teams across the Missouri River to bring the Saints to Utah. When he returned to Grantsville in 1866, he married a young Swedish immigrant, Ellen Okelberry. They purchased over 600 acres from James McBride, including the land where the Clark Historic Farm now stands. They built one of the finest farmsteads in town, including a nice two-story adobe home, two large barns, a wagon house, a granary, corrals, shelters and a root cellar between 1890 and 1900. Charles became one of the wealthiest and most prominent men in Tooele County through his mining interests and through his vast herds of sheep, which he ranged in Wyoming. He was very generous and helped many underprivileged children through school. In 1878, he left his young family to serve for two years on a mission to Sweden. He served two terms as mayor of the town, as a city councilman, Director of the Grantsville Co-op, vice-president of the North Willow Irrigation Company, on the State Board of Education, two terms as a State Representative and twenty years as the First Counselor in the Tooele Stake Presidency,

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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