They first named it Graves Valley. But it wasn't because of deaths in the area and it wasn't an April Fool's Day joke, although the town was founded on that date.
That makes April a special month for the small eastern Wayne County community now known as Hanksville, settled 115 years ago.The area was named Graves Valley by a John Wesley Powell survey crew in 1879 in honor of a member of the group, Walter H. Graves. The name Hanksville was later chosen in honor of an early pioneer, Ebenezer Hanks.
The small town has a lot of history. Once almost completely isolated but now well-known by the thousands of people who travel to Lake Powell from the Wasatch Front and Colorado, it is located about 20 miles north of the Henry Mountains and not many miles from Butch Cassidy's famous Robbers Roost hangout.
Hugh McClellan built a cabin in the Bull Creek area west of the present Fairview Ranch and 13 miles south of Hanksville before the town came into existence.
Hanks arrived on the scene from New York, where he was born in 1815. The name change came when a post office was established in 1890, six years after Hanks died. Descendants of the early pioneer still live in the town and nearby Kaneville.
The early settlers obtained some of their meat from wild cattle, introduced in the area by Colorado ranchers.
Hanksville become well established by the early 1890s. But as late as the 1950s, access to the community was on dirt roads or by light aircraft and the telephone was a relatively new experience for Hanksville residents.
Wild horses still roamed the Burr Desert east and south of the town at that time, but the horse population disappeared through a Bureau of Land Management eradication program and capture by ranchers and riding clubs.
Today the old Wolverton Mill, once nestled in a canyon on the east side of the Henry Mountains, is displayed in Hanksville.
The mill was used to extract gold from ore taken in the Henry Mountains, which was hauled out of the area on mules.