It was the Pike's Peak Gold Rush that first lured Oliver Graves to Colorado in 1859. After a year, he returned to Illinois for his wife Lucy and their five children. In 1862, the family moved to Arvada where they farmed 160 acres at what is now known as Marshall Street near Clear Creek, according to Ellen Aiken's, "A Place Called Arvada."
The Graves family became known for its hospitality. Aiken explains that the Graves Grove, watered from the irrigation ditch that Oliver ran from Clear Creek and blooming with the flowers planted by Lucy with seeds from back east, became a gathering place for community activities like Fourth of July celebrations and threshing parties. According to "More Than Gold, a History of Arvada, 1870-1904," the first Methodist religious services were held in the Graves home in 1863, and many a Sunday school picnic was held in the grove.
In 1867, Oliver Graves was elected president of the school board and helped to choose a site for a school. The site chosen was on Benjamin Wadsworth's property, today recognized as the location of the old schoolhouse recently restored at 5650 Olde Wadsworth Blvd.
William Martin Graves, eldest son of Oliver and Lucy, was 14 when he arrived in Arvada. He became an apprentice blacksmith in Denver, but after two years his dad's illness brought him back to Arvada to help take care of the farm. Realizing that the Arvada area was prime wheat-growing land, in the fall of 1868 William bought a threshing machine and, according to "Waters of Gold," soon he had three steam threshers and became known as the "father of the threshing machine business in the area."
In 1868, when he was just 22, Graves built Arvada's first blacksmith shop. Benjamin Franklin Wadsworth offered him two lots at what is now the northeast corner of Grandview Avenue and Olde Wadsworth Boulevard. Graves later bought these lots plus a third. Soon he had his blacksmith shop fitted with special machinery to do other work needed by the local farmers, and he took on a partner. When his business outgrew the shop, he built a larger shop on Grandview Avenue, east of the first one. He took on more employees. After William's death, his son Robert changed the business from a blacksmith and machine shop into a successful dealership and garage for Ford cars and trucks and Fordson tractors.
Being very civic minded, William Graves served on the first board of directors for the Arvada Cemetery Association from 1889 to 1909, was elected to the first of two terms as county commissioner in 1892 and served as a member of the school board from 1885 to 1906.