After a railroad line was built through Bancroft to the south, the community lost some of its momentum, and agricultural difficulties led to its desertion by the end of the 1930s.

[1] In 1879, Chester Call and his niece's husband, Christian Nelson, established a horse ranch in the area.

Unlike typical Mormon settlements, which were founded by settlers sent by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (hereafter referred to as LDS) authorities, the community was founded spontaneously by its first settlers[6] and not set up in the typical compact, grid patterned townsite.

While there, the visiting leaders asked their members to organize into a central village, away from the Portneuf River flood plain.

As in traditional Mormon towns, Chesterfield was laid out in a grid pattern, consisting of thirty-five ten-acre blocks.

[5] By 1890, the LDS meetinghouse and a store were the only buildings on the townsite as a mistake in the government survey kept the land off the market for a time.

[9][10] The series of recessions in the 1920s and nationwide agricultural problems started the death knell for Chesterfield.

Just over 425 people were left in the area by 1928,[9][10] and the buildings of the Chesterfield town site were mostly deserted before 1941 when the school closed.

Few members could pay cash around 1900, so grains, vegetables, eggs and farm animals were instead paid "in kind".

[13] Aunt Ruth Call David's cabin built of red pine logs with a dirt floor in 1881 and 1882.