VINEYARD — The town once known as the home of Geneva Steel is losing another icon.
Mayor Rulon Gammon, the only mayor Vineyard has ever known, is selling the home where he was born 64 years ago and leaving the town of about 150 residents.
Gammon announced the decision Thursday to a captive audience of fellow Utah County mayors during an informational bus tour around Utah Lake.
"Dramatic changes are taking place in Vineyard," Gammon said. "We have sold our farm."
Gammon has been the town's mayor since it was incorporated 15 years ago and has been working to find a new tax base for the city since Geneva Steel's closure. PacifiCorp announced earlier this year it would build its Lake Side Power Plant on the Geneva Steel site. The 534-megawatt, natural-gas-fired plant will cost $330 million.
Gammon has a heart valve problem and wants to serve a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with his wife before an expected surgery is required. He expects the sale of his farm to close later this year and plans to resign as mayor then, a year before his term ends. Then he will move somewhere nearby or leave on a mission.
When that happens, Vineyard will not only lose the man who has been its face, it probably will get a face-lift.
Gammon ran one of the 32 dairy farms that operated along Geneva Road on the eastern edge of Utah Lake where Vineyard was incorporated. Now the farms are all gone, and the development that has all but landlocked Provo and Orem is creeping into Vineyard. Gammon's 94 acres will be sold to Anderson Development, which will then have purchased more than 300 acres in the town.
"Developers go find land outside great municipalities where the land is cheaper," Gammon said. "It's the cause of sprawl. I expect that's what will happen here. Personally, I don't like to see it happen. I'm committed to agriculture."
Anderson Development has not yet presented any plans to the city.
"I am very happy for Rulon Gammon and very sad as well," said Rep. Margaret Dayton, R-Orem. "There's a lot of history there. For years there's been a Utah Farm Day where hundreds of fourth-graders visited his farm to learn about agrarian life. That life used to be common in this area; now we need a special day, and I guess now that appears to be over."
Gammon made the announcement over the microphone early in the three-hour bus tour.
"There are a lot of rumors floating," he said, " and I decided to tell my friends and colleagues today."
E-mail: twalch@desnews.com