There are three grand Victorian homes in Murray that turn 125 this year: the John P. Cahoon House (home of the Murray City Museum), the Henry J. Wheeler farmhouse (Wheeler Farm), and the Wesley and Frances Walton House, nicknamed the “Red House.” This article will spotlight the Red House. Profiles of the other Victorian homes will appear in subsequent issues.

Simpson David Huffaker came across the plains in 1847 from Nauvoo, Illinois with the first Mormon pioneers. In his breast pocket he carried the seeds of his favorite tree, the honey locust, and several fruit trees. Upon his arrival he was awarded a land grant of 160 acres in what would become Murray. 

This property is where the historic Red House would be built. 

He promptly used those carefully transported seeds to plant trees on his newly-acquired land. “Two of the honey locust trees still stand in the yard,” Rebecca Santa Cruz, Huffaker’s great-great granddaughter and current owner of the house, said. “And seeds from his fruit trees were coveted enough by his neighbors he earned the moniker, 'The Johnny Appleseed of South Cottonwood.’”

First family

When Simpson Huffaker passed away, he left 27 of the 160 acres to his daughter Frances and her husband Wesley Walton. The couple were homesteading a ranch in Woodruff, Utah, but the Murray property is where they chose to build the Red House, a home for their family of 13 children. 

The home is tucked town a little lane, located just off of Wesley Road (named for Wesley Walton) at about 5200 South and between 1300 and 900 East. “People who’ve lived in the neighborhood for years often don’t even know it’s here,” Santa Cruz said. 

“When the house was built none of the subdivisions that surround it were here. The drive entered from 1300 East and wound up the hill where the trailer court is now,” Santa Cruz said. “They must have had a sweeping and beautiful view.” 

Wesley Walton was politically active and was a state senator from 1905 to 1909. He grew up in Maine and his father was a supreme court justice. “This house was a great place for political gatherings and entertaining politicians from out of town,” Santa Cruz said. “He even hosted Teddy Roosevelt here.

“He likely would have run for state governor, but when he was 64 years old his bathrobe caught fire and he suffered burns. He died a year later, in 1917.” 

Santa Cruz’s grandfather, Arthur Walton, was born the year the Red House was built in 1899. It was a big house built for a big family. Wesley and Frances had 10 boys (and one girl) in quick succession. Then two more caboose-children (both girls) for a total of 13 children. Amazingly, all of the children survived to adulthood. 

“My great-grandmother (Frances) had lost two sisters to disease during her youth, and as a young mother, she was determined to keep her children alive,” Santa Cruz said. “At the first sign of symptoms she’d pack up the wagon and take the healthy kids out to the ranch in Woodruff or to another nearby home. Back then, they believed the air surrounding a sick person was ‘bad air.’ It must have worked.” 

The 10 brothers who lived in the house were a force to be reckoned with. They had their own family band and played at local events. “There were enough of them they created their own basketball and baseball team,” Santa Cruz said referencing a black and white photo of a band of 10 boys.

Santa Cruz has spent much time renovating the historic home and she continually finds messages carved or penciled onto the brick, particularly around the kitchen door and various places on the wraparound porch. “It depends on how the light hits, but you can read initials and little notes,” Santa Cruz said. “I think the house is sending me messages.”  

Historic home: haunted and also happy

The house sat empty for 24 years after Frances Walton (wife of Wesley and mother of the 13 children) died in 1942. 

Santa Cruz’s father called it the “haunted house” because it was furnished and somewhat abandoned. In the front hall stood a stuffed wolf (because one of the boys dabbled in taxidermy), and above the wolf hung a picture of Faust, the character who made a deal with the devil. 

“It wasn’t the most welcoming of vestibules,” Santa Cruz laughed. “Local kids would come over and shoot BB guns at the front door. There are still holes in the brick and the surrounding woodwork.”

When she was a child, Santa Cruz’s grandmother lived across the street and occasionally Santa Cruz would get to wander around the old house, which also housed a stuffed deer in the attic. But the place was so big and needed so much work, no one in the family was willing to take it on. And so, it sat.

Then in 1968 one of the 10 boy’s sons (Santa Cruz’s uncle) fixed it up. He sold off some of the land to pay for the renovations and eventually sold the home to a buyer who wasn’t a member of the Walton/Huffaker family. 

But the house had a hold on Santa Cruz. “I thought about it throughout my life, and nine years ago, I bought it,” she said. “And I brought it back to the family.”

Taking care of the old Victorian requires constant work. The first thing Santa Cruz did was take out 9,000 square feet of pink carpeting. “It was on every single floor and staircase.” Under the carpeting were the original old-growth fir floors, some of the planks over 100 feet long. 

The beauty and historic appeal of the place has drawn filmmakers throughout the years. The 2017 version of “Little Women” was filmed almost entirely in the Red House. The attic turret was Jo’s room where she is portrayed writing the iconic tale. 

An aside for those who don’t recall the story, “Little Women” is a novel published in 1868, and is a somewhat autobiographical story written by Louisa May Alcott about her childhood and her sisters, in which Alcott portrayed herself as the character Jo March. 

There were also episodes of “Touched by an Angel” filmed in and around the house, and a crew will start filming this October on a new project (which cannot yet be revealed).

“I feel like the house is trying to chip in where it can,” Santa Cruz said. “I anthropomorphize the place. And when we have reunions, I can feel the house is happy getting all of its people together.” 

What does it mean to be a Victorian? 

The Red House, built in 1899, is built in the Queen Anne Victorian architectural style.

Queen Anne was a British Monarch who reigned from 1702 until 1714, and a popular architecture style emerged during her reign, featuring sweeping exterior stairs and hand-worked ornamentation. During the later reign of Queen Victoria (1837 to 1901), this architecture style entered a revival period and changed somewhat.

During the Victorian revival, the Industrial Revolution was in full-swing and the designers embraced new materials and technologies to create houses with many pre-fabricated flourishes. Mass-production and mass-transit via the railroads made this architectural detailing more affordable, and it therefore became plentiful throughout cities and suburbs across the United States. 

“The typical features in a Queen Anne are that the design is asymmetrical and it has a turret,” Santa Cruz said. “There is often stained glass, a wraparound porch, pocket doors and detailed woodwork.” 

The Red House is one of three beautifully preserved historic Victorian homes located in Murray. On the state historic registry, the Red House proudly boasts many of these features in original form. λ