A Cottage of the 1940s: The Mortensen Ora Home 4310 south

The Mortensen Farmstead – A WWII-Era Cottage Remembered

At 4310 South 3600 West once stood a quiet but enduring piece of Granger’s mid-20th century history. Built around 1941, the Mortensen Ora home was a WWII-era cottage in the Minimal Traditional style, a design that emerged during the war years when housing needed to be practical, sturdy, and efficient. The home was built of brick, with multiple front gables that gave it a simple yet distinctive character. Its original double-hung windows remained unchanged for decades, while two cinderblock garages with wooden gables stood as reminders of its farmstead roots.

Although it was modest compared to the larger farmhouses of the late 1800s, this cottage represented the new era of growth in the Salt Lake Valley—when farmlands were being divided into smaller homesteads and modern housing needs replaced the sprawling pioneer farms. For the Mortensen family, the property was still very much a farmstead, though few outbuildings remained.

Today, the home itself is gone, replaced by a newer neighborhood. Yet, like so many homes of the WWII generation, it carried with it the stories of families who lived through an era of global uncertainty while planting firm roots in West Valley’s soil. The land remembers, even as the landscape changes.