Source: Journal of Church and State, Wntr 2001 v43 i1 p49.

Title: "This will someday be the head and not the tail of the church": a history of the Mormon Fundamentalists at Short Creek. Author: Ken Driggs Locations: Utah Organizations: Mormon Church - History Electronic Collection: A73064916 RN: A73064916 Full Text COPYRIGHT 2001 J.M. Dawson Studies in Church and State

In a 1974 sermon, Leroy S. Johnson, whom many Fundamentalist Mormons revered as a modern day prophet, recounted a story he heard as a young man. The great Mormon prophet-colonizer Brigham Young was returning in a buggy from Pipe Springs, a pioneer outpost in extreme southern Utah on what is now the Arizona border. The Prophet was accompanied by Apostle George Q. Cannon and the driver who reportedly told Johnson the story *Young asked that they stop on Cedar Ridge so that he could survey the barren land. After a moment's reflection he told his party, "this will someday be the head and not the tail of the church. This will be the granaries of the Saints. This land will produce in abundance sufficient wheat to feed the people."(1) Today Johnson's religious community regard this as prophecy which they are fulfilling .

INTRODUCTION In 1890, Wilford Woodruff, fourth president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly called the Mormon Church, issued a press release indicating that the celebration of new plural or polygamous marriage would cease in his denomination. While it took more than a generation before the practice ended, The Manifesto,(2) as Mormons call it, began the church's attempt to make peace with mainstream American society. More than just plural marriage was at issue. Mormons dismantled their communal economy called the United Order,(3) dissolved the Mormon "People's" political party, and modified many rituals which offended the outside world.(4) The religious rhetoric coming out of Mormon meetings began to change in that it focused on commonality with the world rather than separateness. Other doctrines or their interpretations were changed dramatically in the next generation. Mormons backed away from their belief in the near-future return of Jesus Christ and how they interpreted their duty to build a temporal Kingdom of God on earth over which He would reign.(5) But not all Latter-day Saints were ready to accept this new Mormon worldview. Even after a generational change, a small but persistent minority resisted.(6) They finally came to form a separate but parallel religious community committed to preserving "Old Fashioned Mormonism" as many called it.(7) By the 1930s, a remote pioneer town on the Utah-Arizona border had become a recognized center for many of these people .

Short Creek has today disappeared from maps but thrives as Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona. This article will refer to the area by its historic name, Short Creek. It will include a discussion of early history, how Short Creek came to affiliate with the Fundamentalist Mormon community, their efforts to establish a modern version of the United Order, criminal prosecutions of its members and other disruptions of life by civil authorities, the fracture of the community in the early 1950s over a leadership dispute, and its modern development .

The term "Fundamentalist Mormons" was not one of their making. They often refer to themselves as the "Priesthood" or as people involved with "The Work." Mormons believe they have a divinely

restored priesthood authority and attribute their religious power to that authority. In the late 1800s, they often used the term Priesthood synonymously with their religious leadership .

The term Fundamentalists seems to have come from LDS Church Apostle Mark E. Peterson, an outspoken foe of their efforts,(8) The term stuck in the media and Fundamentalists embraced it as their own. In 1991, the religious community at Short Creek incorporated a legal entity called the Corporation of the President of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.(9) It is important to appreciate that Mormon Fundamentalism is not a monolithic group any more than the larger Christian or Islamic communities are homogenous.(10) The Short Creek community is but one part of a much larger and very diverse group. There are sometimes sympathies but no formal ties between Short Creek and any of the other Fundamentalist communities. Other unrelated groups include the recently formed Centennial Park community located near Short Creek and consisting of breakaway members; the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB) headquartered in Bluffdale, Utah, and presided over by Owen Mired; the Davis County Cooperative group founded by Charles W. Kingston in 1943 and still dominated by his family which has "attempted to sever its connections [to Mormon Fundamentalists]"(11); the small and sometimes violent Lambs of God built around the LaBaron family(12); other smaller groups(13); and a great many "independents" who do not affiliate with any single group.(14) In the West, many people experience religious lives with one foot in the Fundamentalist camp and the other in the better-known Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Among other things, the various groups have differing attitudes toward the source of priesthood authority, the centrality of plural marriage, United Order style communalism, and other doctrinal matters.(15) In this way Fundamentalist Mormons are a bit like the Amish. From the outside they are usually regarded as one monolithic group, but on a closer look they consist of a great many smaller and more diverse groups with different practices, beliefs, and customs.(16) EARLY SNORT CREEK HISTORY In 1858, Mormon pioneer Jacob Hamblin discovered the Pipe Springs oasis about twenty miles east of Short Creek. The whole Arizona strip area was used by ranchers to graze cattle as early as 1866. Indians killed James Whitmore and Robert McIntyre in the Short Creek area in 1866. On 2 April 1866, Native Americans also killed three members of the Berry family on the Short Creek. These events brought considerable fear to the surrounding settlements. No permanent settlement at Short Creek seemed possible in this atmosphere.(17) The area was unsettled through the early part of this century until Jacob Lauritzen took up the challenge in 1912. He completed the first water ditch, a three-mile undertaking from a nearby canyon. He brought in his family consisting of a wife and seven children, plus his brother-in-law, to live in a large tent on the north side of the creek bed. They secured water from Maxwell Canyon, bought farm machinery, and had enough ingenuity to save their hens from wild animals .

A school was started in a tent with Charles Hafen of Santa Clara, Utah as the first teacher. In 1914, the Mohave County Commission awarded fifty dollars for the construction of a wooden school house. Frank and Lizzie Colvin built the first permanent home that same year. A post office soon followed. A Canadian named Johnny Spencer established the first general store about the same time .

A Utah government publication in 1914 noted there were five thousand people in all of Washington County. St. George, which was the county seat, had 1,900 residents and was the cultural and commercial center of the area. The publication said of Short Creek "a small settlement is being built up there, which has a school and post office. It is on the proposed Yellowstone-Grand Canyon highway, and dry farms from `Dixie'(18) to Kanab."(19) By 1920, the

Lauritzen family had been joined by Isaac Carling, Frank and Lizzie Colvin, Orim Colvin, brothers Leroy and Elmer Johnson on the north side of the creek, and by James Edwin Black, Clarence Black, Jerry Johnson at Canaan Ranch, and Don Covington. Ranchers improved their herds by bringing in more sheep and cattle and improved the water supply by laying a ten-inch wooden pipe to replace the old flumes. Added water brought even more sheep and cattle. Soon they

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had "stomped out" the little creek bed in Short Creek, bringing more water problems .

In the early 1920s the first crude road to Hurricane, Utah, was built. By 1926 there were about one hundred people in the area. In September 1931, there were twenty-four children enrolled in the eight-grade school.(20) NATHANIEL BALDWIN AND HIS RADIO PLANT In 1924, Isaac Carling left Short Creek for Salt Lake City where he went to work in the Baldwin Radio Plant. Nathaniel Baldwin(21) was a prominent Utah inventor and industrialist. More importantly for Short Creek, he was a financial patron of the Fundamentalist Mormon community. Baldwin's list of employees and corporate officers, in the words of one historian, read "like a Who's Who of the early Fundamentalist movement in Utah.(22) Among them were Lorin C. Woolley,(23) John Y. Barlow,(24) Israel Barlow Jr., (25) Joseph Leslie Broadbent, (26) and Joseph Lyman Jessop(27) who was known to his friends as Lyman. Baldwin also had business ties with defrocked LDS Apostles John W. Taylor and Matthias Cowley.(28) Baldwin built a row of twelve bungalow-type homes for employees near his own residence which locals referred to as "polygamy alley."(29) Carling and others from Short Creek developed ties to this underground community and embraced their beliefs. Often they would join religious discussions in Baldwin radio offices at the end of the workday. Continued polygamy was no great revelation to them as plural families had continued to exist in the Arizona strip(30) for years. Some were refugees from revolution in Mexico that pushed out those in the LDS colonies established in the late 1880s just south of the border.(31) Carling also had a group of cousins from Lee's Ferry, Arizona who were the products of and sometimes practiced post-Manifesto polygamy. Leroy, Price, Jerry, and Elmer Johnson were the sons of Warren Johnson's two wives. The elder Johnson was an extremely religious Mormon with plural families that produced several sons. Their father had taken over the ferry from John D. Lee's sixth wife, Rachel Woolsey Lee, with Lee's arrest for the Mountain Meadows Massacre.(32) Lee was arrested in November 1874 and Warren Johnson began moving his families to Lee's Ferry in March 1875. The part of their childhood that was not passed at Lee's Ferry was spent in school at Kanab.(33) Like many Fundamentalist Mormons, Price had served an LDS mission in the Mormon Eastern States Mission under B. H. Roberts in 1909-1911 and again in 1926.(34) In 1924, Price Johnson took a plural wife. He would later claim Fundamentalist patriarch John W. Woolley,(35) the father of Lorin C. Woolley, married him to his second wife in Centerville, Utah.(36) In 1927, brothers Joseph Lyman, Richard, and Vergel Jessop visited Lee's Ferry where they met several of the Johnsons and other families living there.(37) Price Johnson had moved his family back to Lee's Ferry to homestead in the spring of 1927.(38) That July, five Lee's Ferry Mormons were excommunicated over polygamy, Price among them. When Price moved to Short Creek later in the 1920s, he brought his contacts with the Jessops who were part of the northern Utah Fundamentalist group. Other friendships were made, often cemented by plural marriages among families .

Leroy Johnson recalled that his group of religious traditionalists were courted by other Fundamentalist groups but felt they were not tree. Then Isaac Carling took Leroy and Price Johnson on a three-day drive to Salt Lake City to attend meetings with the Priesthood Group which were usually held in sympathizers' homes. There he said they met John W. Woolley, Lorin C. Woolley, John Y. Barlow, Joseph

Musser,(39) and others. Leroy Johnson recalled that he was converted immediately. By 1932, Short Creekers began writing these men to consider Short Creek as a gathering place, a safe haven away from mounting church and legal pressures in the more populous Salt Lake Valley. Elmer and Leroy Johnson, Carling and others wanted the Priesthood Group to establish a United Order community at Short Creek .

EXCOMMUNICATIONS AND COLONIZATIONS At this time Short Creek was almost entirely composed of members of the LDS Church. The local congregation was a dependent ward of the Rockville Ward in the Zion Park Stake.(40) The traditionalist's support for post-Manifesto polygamy and their claims about continued plural marriage among the Mormon elite did not go unnoticed by church officials. Fundamentalist Mormon Joseph Lyman Jessop in 1934 recorded in his diaries that the groups' leaders had advised adherents "not to hold meetings by ourselves but to mingle with the people in the wards and be a leaven in the lump."(41) This was viewed as dangerous subversion by the larger church .

Church President Heber J. Grant(42) and his new First Counselor J. Reuben Clark(43) developed a stiffening attitude toward polygamy holdouts. At the church's April 1931 general conference, Grant denounced Fundamentalists "who have palpably sought to bring disgrace upon the church and reproach to its leaders." He also reaffirmed that "we have been and are willing" to assist "the criminal prosecution" of polygamists in addition to excommunicating them.(44) When Clark became Grant's counselor in 1933, the church campaign against polygamy intensified. A kind of written ecclesiastical loyalty oath was introduced to identify Fundamentalist sympathizers. It required members to affirm church leaders "without any mental reservation" and "denounce the practice and advocacy of plural marriage." Those who refused to sign were promptly excommunicated.(45) On 30 August 1934, the first four members of the Short Creek Ward were excommunicated.(46) Isaac Carling, who held the priesthood office of high priest, was turned out for preaching polygamy. Warren E. Johnson, Viola Spencer Johnson, and a plural wife of Price Johnson, Hellen Lucy Hull, all were found to have entered polygamous marriages .

By early 1935, polygamists in northern Utah were feeling the increased pressures. The Depression had hit Utah early and hard, leaving many plural families desperate.(47) Some had already been criminally prosecuted. In March, the Utah legislature made the old misdemeanor, unlawful cohabitation, a felony, carrying a five-year prison sentence. The act was effective in mid-May.(48) In this increasingly hostile environment, the Fundamentalists were ready to consider the invitation to settle in Short Creek. Leroy Johnson and others had written the group urging Short Creek as a "refuge for the saints."(49) In May, three men(50) were called on a "mission" to inspect Short Creek as a colony. One of the three, Jessop, describes in his diaries being shown "healthy little orchards and discussing plans for seeding the land and preparing for the coming of many saints to this place to build a city of Zion and feed eventually millions of people."(51) In late May 1935, Fundamentalist leader John Y. Barlow came to the area and organized a congregation. Fundamentalists also attended the LDS Ward and conflicts followed. By July, LDS stake officers were investigating and the excommunication courts followed .

Joseph Musser was an excommunicated stake officer and son of a prominent Mormon, assistant church historian and polygamist Amos Milton Musser. Joseph Musser was also a member of the Priesthood Council formed in 1929 by Lorin C. Woolley and a dedicated journal keeper.(52) His 13 June 1935 entry records a council discussion about Short Creek after John Y. Barlow and others had visited it. Isaac Carling from Short Creek also attended to urge the alliance .

Musser recorded that the three men sent to inspect Short Creek were impressed. They told the Council that it was a good place to reintroduce United Order living and was isolated enough to provide refuge from the prosecutions they experienced in the Salt Lake Valley. John Y. Barlow told the group that Short Creek "was a place prepared by the Lord, not only as a place of refuge ... but a means for

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liveylihood [sic] ... That by a united action and effort the Lord would bless the efforts of the brethren and prosper them."(53) Still, the landscape around Short Creek must have been stark. One Salt Lake Valley Fundamentalist recorded in his diary after a visit, "[i]t was a relief to see Hurricane, with its beautiful green fields and orchards and vineyards after 7 weeks out at Short Creek."(54) Concerned about the invasion of religious traditionalists, representatives of the Zion Park Stake of the LDS Church attended Sunday School in Short Creek on 21 July. Jessop recorded in his diary that day that one stake officer "spent much time belittling anyone who should oppose the Manifesto, calling them silly people." Things deteriorated from there.(55) In September 1935, two more church courts excommunicated another eighteen individuals for refusing to sign the church loyalty oath.(56) Among these were Leroy Johnson and his wife. Johnson recalled the events in a 1969 sermon: The [Zion Park Stake] high council came out to Short Creek in 1935 and called us on the carpet and told us our die was cast and that we were only to accept or reject their edict, there would be no argument. I held up my hand and they gave me a chance to speak. I said "President [Claud Hirschi], do you mean to say by this, that whatever takes place here today, you and your counselors will be responsible for?" He said, "Yes, sir." I said, "That will be all." And I sat down .

After the council had spoken and said what they had to say, they sent the ward clerk around with a little paper to sign. I looked it over and passed it on to my wife. She said, "Are you going to sign it." I said, "I have signed all I am going to." So, she passed it on, and it went through the house. I think there were only four or five people that signed the paper. At the close of the meeting, the president got up and said, "We will send you our decision in a few days." So, a few days later, I got my notice of excommunication, also my wife ...(57) The LDS Church later sent a returned missionary to Short Creek to, as Johnson recalled, "preach repentance to us," but the excommunicated members were unmoved.(58) With the decision to colonize Fundamentalist leaders began to preach the need for a return to the United Order in Short Creek. In June 1935, Musser recorded in his diary: Attended meeting in evening at home of Edmund Barlow and spoke on our activities both here and South of a co-operative nature.

Said none of us were prepared for the United Order, but the present move was in that direction. We must overcome selfishness, prejudice, envy and learn to love our neighbors as ourselves. When this is achieved we will be able to live in accordance with God's plan and will find it so much easier to live than the present plan, we will wonder why we did'nt [sic] adopt it before. Quit gossipping [sic] and bearing false witness.(59) About forty polygamous families moved into the area.(60) From the beginning, cooperative living under religious principles was a goal of Short Creek, although conflict and disagreements over how this should be accomplished was always part of their experience .THE FIRST CRIMINAL PROSECUTIONS Following the LDS Church excommunications in Short Creek, Mohave County, Arizona prosecutors charged eight individuals with polygamy offenses. With Musser acting as a lay legal advisor to the accused,(61) in September 1935 a sympathetic Short Creek justice of the peace then dismissed all charges in a hearing that had become something of a media circus for its day. Jessop later recorded in his diary that a photographer came from near-by Hurricane "to take pictures and report to the International News Service the doings of this colony ... and to get the picture of at least one polygamous family where three babies were born to one man by three wives in one month." A few days later Jessop encountered a New York Times reporter "here getting pictures and news of this polygamous colony. It seems we are the comment of the world."(62) The prosecutor moved the case to the county seat at Kingman and refiled against three individuals. Two of them would be brought to trial in December .

Carling Spencer was tried first before a jury that included only one Mormon. He proudly proclaimed his belief in polygamy and marriage to two wives, claiming First Amendment protection as a defense.(63) Musser recorded in his journals "[i]n Bro. Spencer's case the State has shown conclusively that he is living and devoutly believes in polygamy. If he is not adjudicated guilty of an infraction of the law and imprisoned it will be because the Lord desires it otherwise."(64) After three hours of deliberation he was convicted .

Price Johnson was convicted in just forty-five minutes in a second trial. Both men were sentenced to eighteen months in the Arizona Penitentiary.(65) While the LDS Church approved of the prosecutions, news accounts of the trial reported it was government welfare investigations that triggered the action.(66) Musser felt otherwise. In TRUTH he wrote that Zion Park Stake President Claud Hirschi had "transmitted the names [of the excommunicated Mormons] to Mohave County Attorney Elmo E. Bollinger at Kingman, requesting that the civil authorities get after them and send them to prison. . . ." Musser claimed Hirschi had promised to provide the witnesses necessary for a prosecution.(67) In his private journals, Musser expressed the belief that these troubles were the result of LDS Church pressure: In the conviction of Bro. S[pencer] Prest. Grant has, in part, had his prayer answered that he might be made to rejoice by having some placed in jail, who are practicing polygamy. The prisoner is a good, sound, humble L.D.S. whose religion to him is more than life itself. He would not commit a crime against heaven to save his life and he is now convicted and adjudged guilty of a felony for living a law of God.(68) After the convictions, John Y. Barlow assured the press that nothing would stop the group's colonizing plans.(69) Spencer was quoted in Newsweek saying "I am glad to go to jail for this cause . . . I consider I am a martyr for the Lord." Price Johnson in 1936 told another national news magazine polygamy had been in his family for at least three generations.(70) Both men were released from prison in November 1936 and returned to Short Creek.(71) A DECLARATION OF TRUST IS FILED At least as early as February 1936 Fundamentalists decided "to organize a Co-operative enterprize [sic] according to the laws of the land and work under direction of the Higher Priesthood body."(72) In October

1936, a Declaration of Trust was flied in the Mohave County Courthouse at Kingman. The Trust held title to a saw mill, some farm equipment, and land given "for the purpose of building up the Kingdom of God" through the building of a physical economic community. The group had earlier begun experimenting with a services exchange.(73) The community lived quietly for the next couple of years, protected by its isolation that allowed for modest growth. In 1939, a CCC Camp was established at Short Creek on a high ground of the south side of the wash .

In September 1939, three Utah men at New Harmony in Washington County were arrested in a second round of polygamy prosecutions. They were Fred Jessop,(74) Richard Jessop,(75) and Grover Cleveland LeBaron. They were charged under Utah's 1935 felony unlawful cohabitation law. While deputies drove Richard Jessop to the jail after finding two pregnant women in his home, he complained that his people were being persecuted for living religious laws. "We believe in living the laws of God," he told the deputies. "The laws of man are manmade laws. We believe in living according to the laws of God."(76) Richard Jessop was convicted at a jury trial(77) but it was later overturned by the Utah Supreme Court for insufficient evidence.(78) Fred Jessop was acquitted in a non-jury trial and charges were later dropped against LeBaron .

Some personal conflicts over how to administer religious communalism continued and leaders were constantly addressing them. At one 1940 Salt Lake City meeting Musser told a congregation: The United Order is not something that you will get for nothing. It will require effort. That Order is going to make us

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work, make us become more diligent, and make us one with each other, and one with our Eternal Father and Mother.(79) In June 1942, John Y. Barlow filled vacancies on the Priesthood Council by calling longtime Short Creek residents Leroy Johnson and J. Marion Hammon. Both would have considerable influence in the community. Johnson would become especially close to Barlow and when he died in 1949 would raise several surviving Barlow sons .

A local man who was not a member of the group, former Justice of the Peace Jacob Lauritzen, described their efforts in his autobiography: Under [the Trust] no one owned anything. The men worked under the direction of the leaders and their children, large enough to work, were also drafted into the service of the group, and during fruit picking, canning and such work in the nearby towns. A common store house was provided where {rood, clothing, etc. were gathered and stored. The milk cows of the group were all kept in one barn and milked and cared [for] by individuals assigned to that work. Several times each day a supply truck made the rounds of the homes of the members of the group and distributed milk and all kinds of food such as the group possessed. Clothing and fuel were also furnished to members of the group.(80) But even with such cooperation, many colonists gave up and left the demanding life at Short Creek. The Trust finally was dissolved and after a year of deliberation, in November 1942 the United Effort Plan (UEP) was formed. The four remaining stalwarts--John Y. Barlow, Leroy Johnson, and brothers Richard and Fred Jessop--gave their lands to the reorganized UEP. About a dozen families containing about eighty people were part of the new cooperative. Others who lived in Short Creek apparently stood by and waited to see if the four men's combined efforts would amount to anything .

The UEP was now to be administered by not less than three or more than nine trustees, initially consisting of John Y. Barlow, Musser, Leroy Johnson, Hammon, and Rulon T. Jeffs.(81) The trust instrument provided that "[t]he purpose and object of the trust shall first be charitable and philanthropic, its operations to be governed in a tru [sic] spirit of brotherhood" through "all kinds of legitimate business ventures."(82) The reorganization seemed to rejuvinate the community. In 1942, Hammon was one of the group of new immigrants who arrived and was soon appointed manager of UEP properties. Following a 1943 visit, Musser recorded in his journals that better than one hundred people were committed to the UEP in Short Creek: The spirit of the United Order is [in] possession [of] this little band of saints numbering a dozen families and involving about 100 people. Others in the village are friendly but have not joined us, while a few others are not at all in harmony with the movement .

I viewed real progress; and with the blessings of the Lord we should raise good crops this year. The brethren are alert and determined to succeed if faithfulness and work will bring success. We have confidence in the Lord being pleased with our efforts.(83) In August 1943, Musser wrote about another visit to Short Creek accompanied

by John Y. Barlow and Ed Christensen: ... enjoyed a feast of fat things. Saints there are growing. Economic situation improving. During last three weeks they have received some 400 bushels of peaches lot home canning. Have canned 900 quarts of apricots, besides drying a number of bushels. General spirit of co-operation good.(84) While Musser visited regularly, it was John Y. Barlow who lived in Short Creek much of the time, sharing the experiences of the colonists. He told his people that if they lived in the United Order "God will be with us." In a 1944 Salt Lake City sermon he told his flock: A short time ago, we left these parts and went down to Short Creek and started the United Order. If we do not live that law, the spirit of God will cease to be with us, and we will go down and out, The fullness of the Gospel is the United Order and Plural Marriage. [...] No matter what people do or say about God's laws, they are true. If they killed us, a truth would still be a truth.(85) But the most serious disruption of Short Creek and Fundamentalist Mormon life was on the horizon. By December 1943, scattered arrests of Fundamentalists were again occurring. In February 1944, Musser wrote in his journals: The F.B.I. making a desperate attempt to get something on Br. [John Y.] Barlow and myself to prosecute us in the courts. We believe the [LDS] Church is behind the move. But let them investigate and be damned and go to hell if they chose to, the work of the Lord will not stop.(86) Later that month Musser commented on a grand jury investigation that was particularly focused on TRUTH, the magazine he edited. He wrote: Some of us may have to go to prison, but what of that. We should be willing to bear such a testimony to the nation if that course is the will of the Lord. We ask, not for lighter burdens, our Father, but for the strength to carry out all the burdens that in thy wisdom are placed upon us.(87) On 7 March 1944, the roof caved in. A multi-state raid by federal and state authorities rounded up forty-six Fundamentalist men and women on a variety of charges, including virtually the entire leadership. Utah authorities arrested Fred Jessop, then 40, and Edson Jessop, then 24, near Short Creek on unlawful cohabitation charges.(88) A year later charges against the Jessops were dropped. Leroy Johnson and Hammon were not among those arrested, leaving them free to lead the community in the absence of John Y. Barlow and other patriarchs .

One of the more misguided government actions was an attempt to prosecute the publication of TRUTH as obscene based on its advocacy of plural marriage. In dismissing the prosecution a federal judge observed, "[i]t is nothing more than advocacy of a certain practice that was once part of the religion of the Mormon Church, and which this group of defendants still advocates. There is nothing in it that ... tends to corrupt and debauch minds and morals of those in whose hands it might fall."(89) A total of four cases reached the United States Supreme Court but the Fundamentalists won no significant decisions.(90) When the legal dust had settled, thirty-one men were sentenced to local jail terms of up to one year and fifteen to Utah State Prison terms of up to five years. A few more received federal sentences .

As the state prisoners' terms dragged on, they felt mounting pressures to provide for their families. After seven months they were offered parole if they would sign a written pledge not to live polygamy again. Eleven of the fifteen, including John Y. Barlow and Musser, did sign in order to be reunited with their families around Christmas 1945. Four refused to sign and were not released until November 1947.(91) THE PRIESTHOOD SPLIT In December 1949, John Y. Barlow died in the large Lincoln Street home(92) operated in Salt Lake City as a headquarters and meeting hall by the Fundamentalist community. He was seventy-five-years old. Next in line by ordination on the Priesthood Council was Musser who lived in Salt Lake City. Musser had forged a considerable following through his editorship of the influential Fundamentalist monthly TRUTH and was a major intellectual force in the movement. But Musser and Barlow were very

different men and available records hint at occasional distance between them. Leroy Johnson, who continued to live in Short Creek, was closer to Barlow in temperament and background .

Musser had also suffered a series of debilitating strokes and was under the care of Rulon C. Allred, a naturopath and a Fundamentalist, much of the time. It was Musser's wish to elevate Allred to the Priesthood Council and designate him as heir, a move that was resisted by many, especially in Short Creek. Harsh words by some at the time of the "Prison Manifesto" contributed to the tensions at this juncture .

By 1952, there was a complete break between the two camps and the community divided.(93) Musser called a new priesthood council,

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including Lyman Jessop, Rulon C. Allred who was acknowledged as successor designate, and his younger brother Owen Allred(94) who presently leads that community.(95) Those who did not follow this new council, probably a numerically larger group, followed Leroy Johnson. Charles Zitting,(96) another long-time council member, died four months after Musser and was apparently not accepted as a compromise candidate. Two other men senior to Johnson on the Priesthood Council, LeGrand Woolley and Louis A. Kelsch, declined leadership, reportedly because they had not had their "high priest-apostleship" confirmed upon them.(97) TRUTH came under

the control of the Johnson group and was edited by Musser's son Guy Musser. The Musser group eventually began a new publication, Star of Truth.(98) Johnson's leadership position was cemented during the 1953 Short Creek Raid and events that followed. He presided until 1986 and during that period did not fill vacancies on the Priesthood Council he inherited as a result of the split. With Johnson's death, Rulon Jeffs, an accountant and former LDS missionary in Great Britain, emerged as Successor .

THE 1953 SHORT CREEK RAID The most wrenching and difficult trial to befall Short Creek was the 1953 raid by Arizona authorities. Because these events are fairly well documented in the literature, this will not be discussed in detail here.(99) A complaint from a local judge brought a secret investigation beginning in 1951. Arizona Attorney General Fred O. Wilson retained a Los Angeles detective agency to scout the community under the cover story that they were Hollywood agents looking for a movie location. They soon had a map of the town identifying the occupants of each home. As the investigation neared its climax, the Arizona legislature appropriated $50,000 to finance the raid listed as part of the governor's emergency fund. Only a few legislative leaders knew what the money was for. At one point a bill had been drafted appropriating the raid money as "grasshopper control."(100) On 26 July 1953, over one hundred Arizona lawmen and another one hundred invited newsmen conducted what was intended as a surprise raid, taking nearly every man, woman, and child into custody during a weekend Pioneer Day celebration.(101) Short Creekers had been tipped off in advance by several sources, some of them sympathetic law enforcement officers. Lookouts, one of them Dan Barlow, a son of John Y. Barlow and the present mayor of Colorado City, spotted the advancing lawmen about midnight and warned the community with a dynamite blast Some residents fled into Utah but most of the community was found packed and gathered at the small schoolhouse where they sang patriotic songs and Mormon hymns. When lawmen finally entered Short Creek the assembled crowd began singing "God Bless America" Later in the day, Arizona Governor Howard Pyle went on the radio to announce the raid. He said the purpose was "to protect the lives and futures of 263 children." He called the Short Creek religious community the foulest conspiracy you could imagine" which was "dedicated to the production of white slaves." He described the 1935 Kingman polygamy trials and traced the history of the community as he saw it to that date.(102) Short Creek leader Leroy Johnson denounced the raid as the "most cowardly act ever perpetrated in the United States" and called the police "storm troopers masquerading in highway patrol uniforms."(103) A day later the Arizona Republic commented editorially on the "Cloak-Dagger Raid" which they thought was "carried out in an atmosphere that would have made Mark Sennett and his Keystone Kops green with envy." The editorial rejected Gov. Pyle's assertion that Short Creek was in a state of insurrection. "Insurrection? ... Well, if so, an insurrection with diapers and volleyballs!" The editorial board worried about the effect of the police action on mothers and children.(104) One of the best-known 1953 defendants died within a week of the raid and was unable to answer the charges. Joseph Smith Jessop, 84, died within days of his release, from the Kingman jail with an acute attack of phlebitis. He had been excommunicated from the Milville Ward of the LDS Church in 1930 and moved to Short Creek in 1942 At the time of his death, he had 112 grandchildren and 145 great-grandchildren through his three wives. Fully 110 of his survivors, mostly mothers and children, could not attend his funeral because they were being held in Phoenix by Arizona authorities.(105) Arizona Superior Court Judge Robert A. Tuller awarded twenty-six men one-year suspended sentences in December 1953 as part of a comprehensive plea bargain. Charges against all women and a few other men were dropped as part of the deal. While vigorously condemning Fundamentalist Mormons both for polygamy and their

"communistic way of life," the judge observed, "I don't honestly believe I can rehabilitate you gentlemen. You have an unshaken faith and I have not heard one word of repentance. But to imprison you would not deter others, but would make you martyrs."(106) As a condition of probation the men were ordered not to practice polygamy. ("We didn't practice," one later said dryly, "we knew what we were doing."(107)) Authorities had decided on a new tactic to break up the Fundamentalist community, taking away their children rather than imprisoning the polygamous parents. At least 263 children were seized during the raid.(108) Almost three years later, nearly 150 were still in the hands of Arizona authorities in what had become an expensive and unpopular embarrassment. Finally the Arizona Supreme Court sustained a trial court ruling ordering that the remaining children be released because attorneys for their parents had been denied participation in the proceedings.(109) Utah authorities returned the few children they had seized a few months later.(110) In Utah, only Mormon historian Juanita Brooks had spoken out against the raid,(111) but in Arizona members of the legislature and Democratic party criticized Republican Gov. Pyle.(112) The LDS Church supported the 1953 raid,(113) as they had supported the 1944 prosecutions.(114) Johnson always saw this as proof the church had compromised doctrine in order to gain acceptance from the world. Typical of his sentiments was a 1962 sermon where he said: When [LDS Church] President [David O.] MacKay got up and made the statement that he wanted the people to understand that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was in full harmony with the actions of the state of Arizona in the Short Creek episode, whether he knew it or not he testified to the heavens that the Church had rejected the fullness of the everlasting Gospel.(115) In April 1956, Washington County, Utah, officials reported that polygamists were leaving the area and that the number of their children in local schools had dropped by half. The Salt Lake Tribune wrote that polygamist children attending high school and college in St. George have discontinued and left without leaving forwarding addresses or asking for transfers."(116) The raid was terribly traumatic for all those caught up in it and today has gained almost mythical proportions in the collective memory of Short Creek.(117) But if Gov. Pyle intended it as a warning to conservative Mormons who might be considering joining the Fundamentalists, it backfired. The press coverage(118) only helped alert some to the existence of the community .

One example was Sam Roundy. He was an endowed, temple(119) attending conservative Mormon rancher in Colorado. In 1953, he did not know Fundamentalist Mormons existed, but his father had taught him many of the doctrines he later learned these Old Fashioned Mormons embraced. He had taught these things to his own family and experienced conflicts with his Mormon bishop over it. The bishop did know about Fundamentalists and their teachings so he assumed, incorrectly, that Roundy was associated with them .

Then Roundy read news accounts of the 1953 raid. He contacted Fundamentalist leaders and they sent two representatives to meet with the Roundy family. They were invited to join the Fundamentalist community and to consecrate their holdings, including a herd of about thirty dairy cattle, to the UEP. In 1954, the Roundys moved to Short Creek. His first assignment in the UEP was to manage the dairy herd, enlarged considerably by his consecration,

5

and significantly increasing their milk production .

The Roundys continue to live in Short Creek today. Sam jr. is the police chief of Colorado City supervising a force of three full time men and another three or four part timers. Sam sr. is retired.(120) THE END OF ISOLATION The 1960s ended the isolation of Short Creek. In 1960, the local post office changed its name to Colorado City, erasing the name Short Creek from the map. In 1961, the first oiled highway from Hurricane, Utah to Fredonia, Arizona opened up access to the community. Hildale was incorporated as a Utah town in 1962 .

Also in 1962, a University of Utah graduate student visited the community and attempted interviews but found none willing to talk with an outsider. He counted thirty-one houses and eight mobile homes on the Utah side, and another twenty-five homes and six mobile homes on the Arizona side.(121) Criminal prosecutions came to an end, largely because prosecutors felt the only criminal statutes that reached plural marriages would also have to be applied to other unmarried couples living together.(122) By the early 1990s, Fundamentalist Mormons all around the West including Short Creek were feeling more comfortable in an increasingly tolerant world. The Salt Lake Tribune called the 1990s "something of a golden era for Colorado City and polygamists in general."(123) A New York Times writer reporting on the community wrote "... they have begun a virtual public relations campaign to achieve tolerance, respect, a greater following, and ultimately legal protection. They are speaking at university forums, granting interviews to reporters and forming alliances with groups they once condemned."(124) Even the LDS Church owned Deseret News reported in 1991 that "[f]or the most part, polygamists are a law-abiding, quiet lot who don't flaunt their violation of state law and so aren't bothered by legal authorities." There was even some consideration given to removing Utah's state constitutional ban on plural marriages.(125) But polygamy remained controversial and in an era of tabloid journalism the press rarely resisted an opportunity to report on themes of sex, religion, and people who live differently. The Arizona Republic, Salt Lake Tribune,(126) and other papers(127) invested considerable resources in reporting on the community, the Republic from a more tolerant

standpoint than the Tribune .

MODERN DISPUTES AND CHALLENGES For the last several years of his long life, Leroy Johnson suffered the illness of age and was not as visible in the community as earlier. Two other long time members of the old Priesthood Council, Hammon and Timpson, increasingly asserted themselves and a rift developed in the community. In a dramatic return from his sick bed, Johnson denounced the two in a sermon on 18 February 1984 and expelled them from the Council. By April 1984, Timpson and Hammon were holding separate religious meetings. They began a physically separate religious community called Centennial Park very near Short Creek. The dispute had to do with the basis of legitimate religious authority as well as a clash of strong personalities .

The dispute spilled over into a costly and protracted dispute over communally held UEP homes that drained resources and divided families. Twenty-one men, part of a group of perhaps three hundred dissenters, brought the suit. Some families with members on both side of the divide broke apart.(128) After several years of expensive litigation in 1998, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that the UEP Trust held title to all properties at issue but was not a charitable trust under Utah law.(129) The trial court awarded life estates to some of the plaintiffs on an unjust enrichment theory .

While this matter played out, the Colorado City plural family of Vaughn Fischer sought to adopt the minor children from a previous marriage of a third wife who died of cancer. Relatives of the mother intervened to block the adoption, arguing that any persons engaged in the illegal practice of polygamy were not fit parents. They relied upon the 1955 Vera Black decision. The case went to the Utah Supreme Court that in 1991 issued a significant freedom of religion decision in favor of the Fischers.(130) The 3-2 opinion observed that under some circumstances a plural household might even be best for some children and that the standard should be what was in the best interests of the child. The Washington County trial court later approved the adoption .

Recently, events completely unrelated to the Short Creek community have brought fear of a return to past prosecutions. In 1998 and 1999, Utah authorities prosecuted members of the Kingston family for child abuse and incest in a polygamy context. In the early 1940s, Kingston family members had broken from the Priesthood Council and formed the Davis County Cooperative which proved to be an extremely astute business entity.(131) The 1,500 member Kingston extended family had been estimated to hold $150-million in business interests.(132) The investigation of the Kingstons started when a 16-year-old girl came to authorities with an account of being forced to become the polygamous wife of her 33-year-old uncle and being beaten by her father when she refused.(133) These revelations made the Kingston family the focus of a major investigative effort by the Salt Lake Tribune.(134) But the media barrage that followed rarely noted a distinction between the Kingston family experience and that of the great majority of Fundamentalist Mormons, including those in Short Creek. Sporadic prosecutions of other polygamous men followed and a new chill ran through the entire religious community. One woman who was to be recognized by Utah's Governor Mike Leavitt as one of "Utah's Remarkable Mothers" was abruptly dumped right before a public ceremony at the governor's mansion when it was learned she was one of four widows of a polygamist. (135) The Utah legislature responded to the Kingston revelations with protracted debate about the state's Fundamentalist Mormon community. Ultimately they rejected special funding to investigate alleged child abuse, welfare fraud, and other crimes in the Fundamentalist Mormon community. State Representative David Zolman (R-Taylorsville), himself a Mormon convert, was the most vocal opponent of the proposals

going so far as to say the state owed an apology to Fundamentalist Mormons for its past conduct towards them.(136) The legislature did pass a bill prohibiting adoptions by homosexuals and polygamists, statutorily overturning In the Matter of W.A.T. (137) SHORT CREEK TODAY Today there are over six thousand residents in the two communities and nearby Centennial Park. One scholarly publication coauthored by a University of Utah psychology professor put the entire religious community's population at 8-10,000 in Utah and Canada.(138) The Salt Lake Tribune reported in 1998 that Hildale, Utah had an average household size of 8.55 people and the lowest median age in the state at 13.1 years. The state of Utah had a median age of 26.8 years with 3.13 persons per household that year. Colorado City had a median age of 12.5 years and an average of 7.97 people per household. Arizona had a median age of 32.2 with 2.62 people per household. Per capita income in Hildale was $3,772 and in Colorado City $2,319.(139) Phelps Elementary School in Hildale had about three hundred students and another one thousand were enrolled in the Colorado City Unified Schools. Because of a number of private schools and home schooling in Short Creek, these figures greatly under reported the number of school age children .

In the fall of 2000, leaders of the Short Creek Fundamentalist majority urged parents to withdraw their children from the four Utah and Arizona public schools. Parents were urged to home school their children or enroll them in the half dozen private religious oriented schools organized by respected community figures. One newspaper report claimed more than a thousand students withdrew from the public schools as a result.(140) Utah media reported the events with

6

alarm, suggesting it was further evidence of a community belief that the end of the world was at hand.(141) Reporters who showed up in the community were generally ignored and got little reliable information.(142) In September, community leaders gave this author a tour of some of the newly constructed schools and said the move was motivated by a desire to more overtly teach the role of God in human history and science. A standardized curriculum used in a Salt Lake City school operated by the community was revised for use in similar Short Creek schools. Many teachers from the public schools resigned to teach as volunteers in the new religious schools. The Salt Lake Tribune reported in an August 2000 article that 10 percent of Utah's 550,000 school age children were in private or religious schools.(143) It is suspected that the move was also partly the result of continued hard feelings from a bitter 1990s division in the community that resulted in about 10 percent establishing a new religious group at near by Centennial Park. Schoolteachers, administrators, and children in the public schools came from both groups. After the exodus to private schools it was mostly the dissenters who remained in the greatly reduced public school system .

Colorado City and Hildale have a combined annual budget of $13 million. The twin communities included an FM radio station, KCAA. A new $2.8 million municipal airport with a terminal, weather instruments, and runway lights was built with federal help. In 1992, it was proclaimed Arizona Airport of the Year and in 1997 recorded 3,500 takeoffs and landings, about average for a small facility. An electric power plant has been built to produce more than the community's needs with the excess to be sold.(144) College education is not discouraged in the religious community. The Mohave Community College has offered courses in the local high school for several years. Men and women sometimes go to college with financial support from community funds with the understanding that they will return to apply their skills for the common good. Recently this has included two dentists and a physician. For women, college is considered most appropriate after children are raised and living independently. Fundamentalist Mormons are likely to enroll at the two-year Dixie College in St. George or Southern Utah State University at Cedar City. When asked in 1996 about Short Creek students, Doug Alder, former president of Dixie College in nearby St. Georgia, told the Dallas Morning News "they're bright, they're

well-disciplined, they're hard-working students."(145) The community opened John Y. Barlow University under the guidance of school administrator Louis Barlow, a son of the late religious leader. Presently, the unaccredited school consists of one building and a curriculum emphasizing computer and vocational instruction, enrolling mostly local young people.(146) So long as Fundamentalist Mormons insist on living out of the nation's mainstream, they will be political targets and threatened with criminal prosecutions.(147) This in spite of the fact that career prosecutors see this as futile and likely to lead to results that the public would not support.(148) Even so the threat will probably always be a part of life as a Fundamentalist Mormon .

An Arizona Highways writer observed in a 1994 piece that "today, with a hotel and restaurant, Colorado City has decided to live with the outside world instead of fearing it. It seems like a town sure enough of the good in its lifestyle to be able to withstand alternatives displayed by passersby.(149) CONCLUSION Leroy Johnson died in his home just after Thanksgiving 1986. He was ninety-eight years old. Fifteen widows reportedly survived him. His funeral was the first public gathering held in the large public meeting hall that now bears his name. A crowd of five thousand attended the two-hour service and then followed his body to the community graveyard. His plain casket was carried in an old horse-drawn wagon. He is buffed under a simple granite headstone proclaiming him "Prophet." Sandy, Utah accountant Rulon T. Jeffs, 81 years old at the time, was introduced as Johnson's successor. The community's majority did not recognize the competing claims of Hammon. Jeffs reportedly has excellent business instincts and is credited with bringing financial health to the community.(150) Johnson's death ended an era. The Mormon circulation magazine Sunstone called him "a dominant figure in post-Manifesto polygamy for over half a century."(151) During his period of leadership, Short Creek grew in numbers, began to prosper financially, and gained confidence as a religious community. Under Jeffs, the community has opened up considerably, looking to improve its relationship with the outside world while retaining its unique religious culture. Economic expansion in Colorado City and in many other holdings has accelerated. Educational changes and aggressive expansion of community services under both government and church sponsorship continue .

Internal conflicts continue and politicians have again found them as a target, but the Short Creek community is clearly here to stay in some form. The biggest challenge for them will be engaging the outside world without losing their distinct values, customs, and strongly held identity .

(1.) Leroy S. Johnson, The L. S. Johnson Sermons, 7 vols. (Hildale, Utah: Twin Cities Courier Press, 1983-84, 1990), 3: 854-55 .

(2.) The Manifesto is published as an "Official Declaration" in the Doctrine and Covenants, one of four volumes Mormons recognize as scripture .

(3.) Nineteenth-century Mormonism experimented with religious communalism. In the Utah Territorial period, it was called the United Order, but appeared in a wide variety of forms. One of the primary goals of such cooperation was to keep non-Mormon influences at bay. They had become particularly intrusive with the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869. A combination of economic changes and federal pressures brought the collapse of all United Order efforts by 1900. The LDS Church has completely abandoned such social experimentation today and become ardently capitalist. For an excellent study of these early efforts, see Leonard J. Arrington, Feramorz Y. Fox, and Dean May, Building the City of God: Community & Cooperation Among the Mormons (Salt Lake City, Utah.' Deseret Books, 1976) .

(4.) For a rare discussion of this subject which Mormons generally consider sacred and not for public display, see David John Buerger, The Mysteries of Godliness: A History of Mormon Temple Worship (San Francisco, Calif.: Smith Research Associates, 1994); see in particular, 133-71 .

(5.) For studies of this transition see Ken Driggs, "The Mormon Church--State Confrontation in Nineteenth Century America," Journal of Church and State 30 (Spring 1988): 27389; Armand L. Mauss, The Angel and the Beehive: The Mormon Struggle with Assimilation (Urbana and Chicago, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1994); B. Carmon Hardy, Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage (Urbana and Chicago, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1992); Stephen Cresswell, Mormons & Cowboys, Moonshiners & Klansmen Federal Law Enforcement in the South & West, 1870-1893 (Tuscaloosa, Ala.: University of Alabama Press, 1991); Thomas G. Alexander, Mormonism in Transition: A History of the Latter-day Saints, 1890-1930 (Urbana and Chicago, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1986); and Edward Leo Lyman, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood (Urbana and Chicago, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1986). More recently, see a short summary of this transition in Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling, Mormon America: The Power and the Promise (San Francisco, Calif.: Harper Books, 1999), 38-93 .

7

(6.) One University of Utah graduate student, Marshall Day, titled his unpublished 1963 Master's Thesis concerning Short Creek "A Study of Protests Against Adaptation," which is an apt description of what occurred. This source will hereinafter be cited as "A Study of Protest Against Adaptation." (7.) For a short general history of Fundamentalist Mormons, see Ken Driggs, "After the Manifesto: Modern Polygamy and Fundamentalist Mormons," Journal of Church and State 23 (Summer 1990): 38-60 .

(8.) Note "An Open Letter To Mark E. Peterson of the Quorum of Twelve," TRUTH, December 1944, 169. TRUTH was a monthly magazine published by Fundamentalist Mormons from June 1935 until June 1956 .

(9.) This is a different legal entity from the United Effort Plan Trust discussed below .

(10.) For an attempt to catalog the various religious communities who trace their roots to Joseph Smith Jr., see Steven L. Shields, Divergent Paths of the Restoration, 3rd ed. (Bountiful, Utah: Restoration Research, 1982). For a discussion of some "Contemporary fundamentalist movements" which advocate plural marriage, see Irwin Altman and Joseph Ginat, Polygamous Families in Contemporary ,Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 43-60 (hereinafter cited as "Polygamous Families in Contemporary Society") .

(11.) Hans A. Baer, Recreating Utopia in the Desert: A Sectarian Challenge to Modern Mormonism (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1988), 37 .

(12.) See Ben Bradlee, Jr. and Dale Van Atta, Prophet of Blood The Untold Story of Ervil LaBaron and the Lambs of God (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1981); and Scott Anderson, The 4 O'Clock Murders (New York: Doubleday, 1993). This group has steadily disintegrated since the death of its leader, Ervil LeBaron, in a Utah prison in 1981. See the Salt Lake Tribune: Vaughn Roche, "Ervil LeBaron Found Dead In Prison Cell," 17 August 1981, 1B; and Con Psarras, "Tests Indicate Le Baron Likely Died of Seizure," 18 August

1981, 1B. See also "A Hand from the Grave: The Polygamy Murders," Newsweek, 21 December 1987, 45 .

(13.) For instance, the small Nevada based Aaronic Order. See Baer, Recreating Utopia. Note the discussion of schizmatic groups, 31-42 .

(14.) One of the more celebrated and free thinking independents was Alex Joseph of Big Water, Utah, who died in 1998 at age sixty-two leaving seven widows, twenty-two children, and twenty-seven grandchildren. See Paul Rolly and Dawn House, "Joseph Rites: A Celebration Of the Rebel," Salt Lake Tribune, 4 October 1998, B-1. Note also on the SingerSwapp family: David Fleisher and David M. Freedman, Death of an American: The Killing of John Singer (New York: Continum, 1983); Ogden Kraut, "The Singer/Swapp Seige: Revelation or Retaliation?," Sunstone 12 (November 1988): 10-17; "The Return of the Patriarch," Time, 1 February 1988, 21; and Singer v. Wadman, 595 F.Supp. 188 (D. Utah 1982). Another well known independent is Ogden Kraut whose Salt Lake City based Pioneer Press publishes books for a Fundamentalist Mormon audience. Finally, see the Royce Potter employment discrimination case initiated by an independent police officer, Royce Potter. Potter v. Murray City, 760 F.2d 1065 (10th Cir. 1985); 585 F.Supp. 1126 (D.Utah 1984), cert. denied, 474 U.S. 849 (1985); and Penelope W. Saltzman, "Potter v. Murray City: Another Interpretation of Polygamy and the First Amendment," Utah Law Review (1986): 345-71 .

(15.) For more on the doctrinal positions of the Short Creek Fundamentalists, see two articles by the author in Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought: "Fundamentalist Mormon Attitudes Toward the Church as Reflected in the Sermons of the Late Leroy S. Johnson," 23 (Summer 1990): 38-60, hereinafter "The Sermons of Leroy S. Johnson," and "One Hundred Years After the Manifesto: Polygamy in Southern Utah Today," 24 (Winter 1991): 44-58, hereinafter "One Hundred Years After the Manifesto." (16.) See John A. Hostetler, Amish Society, 3rd ed. (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980); and Steven M. Nolt, A History of the Amish (Intercourse, Pa.: Good Books, 1992) .

(17.) Loren Webb, "From Short Creek to Colorado City." Unpublished manuscript dated 9 March 1977; hereinafter "From Short Creek to Colorado City." For some years Webb covered events in Colorado City for the Spectrum, a daily newspaper published in St. George, Utah .

(18.) The southwestern part of the state, is frequently called Utah's "Dixie." Beginning in October 1861, Brigham Young called hundreds of Mormons on "missions" to pioneer the area and try to establish a native cotton industry. See generally, Under Dixie Sun: A History Of Washington County (Panguitch, Utah: Washington County Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, 1950), 61-93 .

(19.) Facts and Figures Pertaining to Utah, State Bureau of Immigration, Labor and Statistics: Salt Lake City, 1915, 167-68 .

(20.) Roman Malach, "Short Creek--Colorado City on the Arizona Strip," unpublished manuscript, 1982, hereinafter "Colorado City on the Arizona Strip." See also "From Short Creek to Colorado City." (21.) Baldwin was born on 1 December 1878 and died in Salt Lake City at the home of his son on 19 January 1961, at age 73. Baldwin's journals are preserved in the special collections of the Mariott Library at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Those journals reflect his close friendships with Fundamentalist Mormons and his attending their religious meetings as early as 1921. He records being notified of his excommunication from the LDS Church on 21 December 1921, because of his religious beliefs .

(22.) Merrill Singer, "Nathaniel Baldwin, Utah Inventor and Patron of the Fundamentalist Movement," Utah Historical Quarterly 47 (Winter 1979): 42-53, see esp. 51, hereinafter cited as "Nathaniel Baldwin." (23.) Woolley was born on 23 October 1856, excommunicated from the LDS Church in January 1924, and died on 23 September 1934, at age 77. See obituary at "Lorin C. Woolley," Salt Lake Tribune, 20 September 1934, 18 .

(24.) Barlow was born on 4 March 1874, and died in Salt Lake City on 29 December 1949, at age 75. He had served two missions for the LDS Church in the Northern and Eastern States Mission in 1895-1897, and in the Northwestern States Mission in 1918-1919. On 1 April 1919, he was excommunicated over his preaching plural marriage while a missionary. He was a member of the original 1929 Fundamentalist Mormon Priesthood Council, a leadership body similar to the LDS Church's First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. With the death of leader Joseph Leslie Broadbent on 15 March 1935, Barlow became the senior council member and leader of the group until his death. See a detailed obituary at "President John Yates Barlow," TRUTH, February 1950, 229-33. See also his obituary at "John Yates Barlow," Deseret News, 30 December 1949, 5B .

(25.) Israel Barlow Jr. was born in Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1842, was excommunicated by the LDS Church in 1921, and died in Salt Lake City in 1923. See "Aged Patriarch of L.D.S. Church Is Excommunicated," Salt Lake Tribune, 17 May 1921, 4; "Patriarch Barlow Excommunication L.D.S. Church Impels County Attorney

8

Robinson to Make Investigation," Salt Lake Telegram, 18 May 1921; "Pioneer of 1848 Dies of Disability," Salt Lake Telegram, 27 November 1923; and "Israel Barlow Patriarch, Born in Nauvoo, Dies," Salt Lake Tribune, 27 November 1923 .

(26.) Broadbent was born on 3 June 1891, in Lehi, Utah, and died on 15 March 1935 in Salt Lake City. See his obituary at "Joseph Leslie Broadbent," Deseret News, 16 March 1935, 7 .(27.) Jessop was born on 10 February 1892, in Millville, Utah, and died on 11 February 1963, in Murray, Utah. See a biography of one of his wives, Winnie Porter Jessop, in Lorraine A. Bronson, Winnie. Privately published typescript book, 1989 .

(28.) Both had been dropped from their prominent church callings in 1905 because of their continued support for plural marriage. Taylor was excommunicated and Cowley disfellowshipped in 1911. While they never embraced Fundamentalism, it is significant that they too had the Baldwin connection. See Victor W. Jorgensen and B. Carmon Hardy, "The Taylor-Cowley Affair and the Watershed of Mormon History," Utah Historical Quarterly 48 (Winter 1980): 4-36. Sam Taylor, a son of John W. Taylor, published an account of his father's refusal to embrace a Fundamentalist group before his death in 1916. Samuel Woolley Taylor, Family Kingdom (1951, Reprinted Salt Lake City, Utah: Western Epics, 1974), 273-79. This account is suspect because the present day Fundamentalists did not begin basic organization until 1921 at the earliest .

(29.) "Nathaniel Baldwin" and Marianne Thompson Watson, "Joseph Jessop, The Baldwin Radio Factory, and `Old Fashioned Mormonism,'" unpublished manuscript dated 22 April 1992 .

(30.) The Arizona Strip refers to the northern part of the state cut off from the main area by the Grand Canyon .

(31.) Elaine Hallmark Francis, "A Corner Out of Time: Pioneering the Arizona Strip," Journal of Arizona History 30 (Summer 1989):

117-42; and F. LaMond Tullis, Mormons in Mexico (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1987), 87-108 .

(32.) The Mountain Meadows Massacre was the destruction of a non-Mormon wagon train and the killing of as many as 130 people by Mormons and Indians on 11 September 1857. Juanita Brooks, "Lee's Ferry at Lonely Dell," Utah Historical Quarterly 25 (October 1957): 284-90; Juanita Brooks, Emma Lee (Rpr. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1988), 97; Driggs, "The Sermons of Leroy S. Johnson," 38-60; Evelyn Brace Measles, Lee's Ferry: A Crossing on the Colorado (Boulder, Colo.: Pruett Publishing Co., 1981), 29-30; P. T. Reilly, Lee's Ferry: From Mormon Crossing to National Park (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press) .

(33.) Driggs, "The Sermons of Leroy Johnson," 42-45; P. T. Reilly, ed., Johnson Brothers Remember Lee's Ferry (privately published by Glen Johnson, 1991), 13. Hereinafter cited as Johnson Brother's Remember Lee's Ferry .

(34.) LDS Church archival records show Price Johnson, while living in Bryon, Wyoming, being set apart to serve in the Eastern States Mission on 9 November 1909, and returning on 21 December 1911. While living at Short Creek he was again called to the Eastern States Mission, being set apart on 2 February 1926, and returning on 19 September 1926 .

(35.) John W. Woolley was born in Pennsylvania on 30 December 1831, and arrived in Utah Territory with his family in 1848. He was excommunicated 30 March 1914, and died on 13 December 1928. See "Excommunication of John W. Woolley," Salt Lake Telegram, 3 April 1914, 3 .

(36.) Mark J. Baird and Rhea A. Baird, eds., Reminiscences of John W. Woolley and Lorin C. Woolley, 4 vols. Privately published. See "Discussion with Price Johnson, June 1977" in vol. II .

(37.) Vergel Jessop would later recall that he moved to southern Utah in March 1927. He was excommunicated from the Kanab Stake of the LDS Church along with Donald Spencer on 16 November 1935. Author's interview with Vergel Jessop on 5 January 1990. Jessop died in Colorado City on 17 February 1990 .

(38.) Johnson Brothers Remember Lee's Ferry, 37 .

(39.) Joseph White Musser was born on 8 March 1872, was excommunicated by the LDS Church over plural marriage in March 1921, and died in Salt Lake City on 29 March 1954, at age 82. He was a member of the original Fundamentalist Mormon Priesthood Counsel formed in 1929. He was also editor of the influential Fundamentalist Mormon monthly magazine TRUTH through most of its existence. See "Musser Disfellowshipped," Salt Lake Tribune, 14 December 1909; "Religious Cult Leader, 82, Succumbs After Illness," Salt Lake Tribune, 31 March 1954, 26; and "Saint Joseph White Musser In Memoriam," TRUTH, June 1954, 1-48 .

(40.) A Mormon congregation is called a ward and is based upon a geographic unit. Mormons are assigned which congregation they are to attend. A stake is the rough equivalent of a Catholic archdiocese or Presbyterian presbytery .

(41.) Diary of Joseph Lyman Jessop, January 1, 1934 to April 21, 1945. N.d., privately published by the Jessop family. Entry dated 2 December 1934 .

(42.) Grant was a son of polygamous Apostle Jedediah M. Grant and was himself polygamous. He was ordained an Apostle in 1882 at age 25. He became the seventh president of the LDS Church upon the

death of President Joseph F. Smith in 1918 at age 62 at which point he only had one surviving wife. lie served until his death in 1945 at age 88. See generally, Leonard J. Arrington, ed., The Presidents of the Church (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book, 1986), 211-48 .

(43.) Clark had been a career diplomat with the State Department and Ambassador to Mexico. He was called as Second Counselor to Grant on 6 April 1933, at age 61. He was sustained as First Counselor on 11 October 1934. He served as a Counselor in the Mormon First Presidency until his death in Salt Lake City at age 90 in 1961. For more on his actions against Fundamentalist Mormons, see D. Michael Quinn, J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1983), 179-87 .

(44.) James R. Clark, Messages of the First Presidency, 5 vols. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1965-1975), 5: 292-303 .

(45.) Musser published one of the oaths in TRUTH as follows: I, the undersigned member of the Millville Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, solemnly declare and affirm that I, without any mental reservation whatsoever, support the Presidency and Apostles of the Church; that I repudiate any intimation that any one of the Presidency or Apostles of the Church is living a double life; that I denounce the practice and advocacy of plural marriage as being out of harmony with the declared principles of the Church at the present time; and that I myself am not living in such alleged marriage relationship .

"Mass Excommunications," TRUTH, March 1936, 129. For more information on the oath see J. Reuben Clark: The Church Years, 184-85 .

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(46.) See Rockville Ward, Zion Park Stake, Transcript of Ward Records, 1934. (Also called Form E.) Microfilm in LDS Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah .

(47.) Utah per capita income fell from $537 in 1929 to $237 in 1933. In 1932, state unemployment stood at 36 percent. In the summer of 1935, the federal government's discontinuance of many benefits under the Federal Emergency Relief Act (FERA) and Utah's unwillingness to pick up those benefits brought a 50 percent reduction in benefits. Those cuts triggered a small riot in Salt Lake City in early November 1935. See generally, Wayne K. Hinson, "The Economics of Ambivalence: Utah's Depression Experience," Utah Historical Quarterly 54 (Summer 1986): 268-85 .

(48.) An Act Amending Section 103-52-2, Revised Statutes of Utah, 1933, Making Unlawful Cohabitation a Felony, and Providing That All Persons Except the Defendant Must Testify in Proceedings Therefore, ch. 112. Laws of Utah 1933, 220 .

(49.) Jessop diaries, 10 May 1935 .

(50.) Ianthus Barlow, a brother of John Y. Barlow, Joseph Lyman Jessop, and Carl Jentzch .

(51.) Jessop diaries, 13 May 1935 .

(52.) The originals of Musser's journals are in the LDS Archives in Salt Lake City. The author has also secured a photocopy of the journals from independent Fundamentalist Mormon sources .

(53.) Musser journals, 13 June 1935 .

(54.) Jessop diaries, 1 July 1935 .

(55.) Ibid., 21 July 1935 .

(56.) See Rockville Ward, Zion Park Stake, Transcript of Ward Records, 1935. (Also called Form E.) Microfilm in LDS Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah .

(57.) Johnson Sermons, 6: 342-43 .

(58.) Ibid., 1: 342 .

(59.) Musser journals, 23 June 1935 .

(60.) Alexander J. Wedderburn Jr., "Polygamy Again Causes Half-Amused, Half-Bitter Arizona-Utah," Washington Post, 29 September 1935, 9B .

(61.) The eight charged were: Clarence Allred, Silvia Allred, John Y. Barlow, Price Johnson, Hellen Hull, Isaac Carling Spencer, and two Jane Does. Charges against all were dismissed in September 1935 by Justice of the Peace J. M. Lauritzen. See the Arizona Republic: "Polygamy Case Set For Today," 6 September 1935, 10, and "Justice Holds Plural Wives Charge Invalid," 7 September 1935, 1. Note also: "Polygamy Again Causes Self-Amused, Half-Bitter Arizona-Utah." (62.) Jessop Diary, 6 and 19 August 1935 .

(63.) "Polygamy Admitted At Trial," Arizona Republic, 11 December 1935, 1 .

(64.) Musser journals, 10 December 1935 .

(65.) In the Arizona Republic see: "Prison Term To Be Meted," 12 December 1935, 1; "Polygamy Verdict Is `Guilty,'" 13 December 1935, 11; and "18 Months Meted For Polygamy," 14 December 1935, 1. For an irreverent account of the trials, see Wallace Stegner, Mormon Country (Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1970), 212-14 .

(66.) "3 Polygamists Suspects Face Arizona Trial," Los Angeles Examiner, 12 October 1935, I-3 .

(67.) "Heber J. Grant Given Cause To Rejoice," TRUTH, January 1936, 101-04 .

(68.) Musser journals, 11 December 1935 .

(69.) "Salt [sic] Creek Polygamy To `Carry On'," Arizona Republic, 15 December 1935, 1 .

(70.) "Polygamy: Court Says Religious Freedom Includes But One Wife," Newsweek, 21 December 1935, 12; and "Multiple Wives: Arizona Prisoner Defends His Conduct on Religious Grounds," Literary Digest, i August 1936, 9-10 .

(71.) Musser journals, 8 November 1936; Jessop Diary, 11 November 1936. Price Johnson would break with the community some months later in a dispute with John Y. Barlow. He remained a committed Fundamentalist but opposed efforts to organize a church structure, feeling that the Fundamentalist mission was limited to maintaining plural marriage. Baird and Baird, Reminiscences, II: 17-18 .

(72.) Jessop diaries, 18 February 1936 .

(73.) Declaration of Trust, Recorder's Record of Mohave County, Kingman, Arizona, 307, dated 12 October 1936, and Musser journals,

29 December 1935 .

(74.) Fred Jessop was born on 20 April 1910. Today he is the bishop of the old Short Creek community where he functions as both a religious leader and kind of city manager .

(75.) Richard Jessop was born on 2 January 1894, in Millville, Utah, and died on 23 October 1978, at age 84 in Colorado City, Arizona .

(76.) As quoted in State v. Jessup, 100 P.2d 969 (Utah 1940). Note the opinion misspells his last name throughout .

(77.) The original court file on Richard Jessop at the Washington County Courthouse in St. George, Utah, contains the trial transcript. See Criminal Docket #268, filed 5 September 1939 .

(78.) See State v. Jessup .

(79.) As quoted in the minutes of a 25 August 1940, meeting in the home of Charles Zitting in Salt Lake City. John Y. Barlow presided at the meeting. Minutes of these meetings are in the custody of the present leadership of the Short Creek community. Mormons believe in a married God and a Mother in Heaven .

(80.) As quoted in "Colorado City on the Arizona Strip," 7 .

(81.) Jeffs, an accountant, is the current leader of the old Short Creek community .

(82.) Declaration of Trust of the United Effort Plan, Recorder's Record of Mohave County, Kingman Arizona, dated 9 November 1942, 597 .

(83.) Musser journals, 5 May 1943 .

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(84.) Ibid., 13 August 1943 .

(85.) Johnson Sermons, 7:7, a sermon dated 20 January 1944. A small number of Barlow's sermons are published in this series .

(86.) Musser journals, 8 February 1944 .

(87.) Ibid., 29 February 1944 .

(88.) "Forty-Six Seized In Three-State Polygamy Drive," Salt Lake Tribune, 8 March 1944, 1; "Fundamentalists," Time, 20 March 1944, 55; "Fundamentalist Polygamists," Newsweek, 20 March 1944, 86; and "Two Men Held In County Jail On Polygamy Charge," Washington County News, 9 March 1944, 1 .

(89.) United States v. Barlow et al, 56 F.Supp. 795, 797 (D.Utah 1944). See also: "Cult Magazine Is Denounced," Arizona Republic, 15 March 1944, 5; "Indictments Quashed," TRUTH, May 1944, 289-302 .

(90.) Chatwin v. United States, 326 U.S. 455 (1946); Cleveland v. United States, 329 U.S. 14 (1946); Musser et al v. Utah, 333 U.S. 95 (1948); and United States v. Barlow et al, 323 U.S. 805 (1044) .

(91.) The eleven who signed the agreement and were paroled on 15 December 1945 were: Rulon C. Allred, Albert Barlow, Edmund Barlow, Ianthus Barlow, John Y. Barlow, Oswald Brainich, David B. Darger, Lyman Jessop, Heber Cleveland Kimball, Joseph W. Musser, and Alma A. Timpson. The four who refused to sign were Arnold Boss, Louis A. Kelsch, Morris Q. Kunz, and Charles F. Zitting. This document became very divisive within the Fundamentalist community as the "Prison Manifesto." (92.) In July 1942, Hammon, acting for the Fundamentalists, bought a large home which still stands today at 2157 Lincoln Street. They paid $5,800 for the property, puffing $800 down. Musser journals, 13 July 1942. Their first meeting was held in the home on 9 August 1942. Ibid., August [no date] 1942 .

(93.) See "Polygamous Families in Contemporary Society," 47-48. For partisan accounts of this split seen from the Musser viewpoint, see Dorothy Allred Solomon, In My Father's House (New York and Toronto: Franklin Watts, 1984), 15-30, and Lorraine A. Bronson, Winnie (Privately published typescript book, 1989), 202-29 .

(94.) Allred was born in Blackfoot, Idaho on 15 January 1914. He is a son of B. Harvey Mired, a one-time Idaho state legislator, LDS missionary, and author of a book influential among Fundamentalists, A Leaf in Review (Caldwell, Idaho: Claxton Printers, Ltd., 1933) .

(95.) Today the old Musser group operates out of Bluffdale, Utah, under the leadership of Owen Allred. It is sometimes called the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB) after a legal entity created to hold title to their properties. They have a United Order community of just under a thousand people at Pinesdale, Montana, not far from Hamilton on the western end of the state. Smaller ones are scattered about Utah. They have substantial congregations outside Mexico City, an outpost of disaffected Mormons outside London, and a membership of more than seven thousand. There are now distinct doctrinal differences with Short Creek and they still operate under a Priesthood Council. Relations between the two groups are respectful but distant. All of the larger Fundamentalist families have members in both groups .

(96.) Zitting was born in Harrisburg, Utah on 30 March 1894, and died on 14 July 1954 at age 60. See "President Charles Frederick Zitting: In Memoriam," TRUTH, August 1954, 97-100 .

(97.) Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1986), 210 .

(98.) TRUTH and Star of Truth both ceased publication in June 1956 .

(99.) See Martha Bradley, Kidnapped From That Land: The Government Raids On The Short Creek Polygamists (Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1993). For a personal recollection of the raid by Colorado City Mayor Dan Barlow, see David Isay, Holding On (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996), 169-73 .

(100.) Wiley S. Maloney, "Arizona Raided Short Creek - Why?," Collier's Magazine, 13 November 1953, 30-31 .

(101.) Brigham Young and the first party of Mormon pioneers entered the Salt Lake Valley on 24 July 1847. Since then it has been a prominent Mormon holiday now also recognized by the State of Utah .

(102.) The full text of Gov. Pyle's remarks can be found in "Pyle Condemns Short Creek `Plot' As Insurrection," Arizona Republic, 27 July 1953, 15; and U.S. Senate, Committee on the Judiciary, Subcommittee Hearings on Res. 62, Juvenile Deliquency (Plural

Marriage), 84th Congress, 1955, 13-16 .

(103.) "Police Action at Short Creek," Deseret News, 27 July 1953, 8A, and "Arizona Pushes Proceedings in Short Creek Raid," Deseret News, 27 July 1953, 1A .

(104.) "Cloak-Dagger Raid," Arizona Republic, 28 July 1953, 1 .

(105.) "Joseph Smith Jessop, 84, Dies in Short Creek; Phoenix Holds Relatives," Washington County News, 3 September 1953, 10 .

(106.) Judge Tuller's complete remarks can be found at Subcommittee Hearings, 4-7 .

(107.) Lisa Schnebly Heidinger, "Colorado City: A People on the Cusp of Time," Arizona Highways, August 1994, 36-44, see esp. 41 .

(108.) Gladwin Hill, "Arizona Raids Polygamous Cult; Seeks to Wipe Out Its Community," New York Times, 27 July 1953, 1; "Short Creek Leaders Free," Arizona Republic, 8 December 1953, 1 .

(109.) "147 Receive Short Creek Restoration," Arizona Republic, 22 March 1955, 12; Martha S. Bradley, "The Women on Fundamentalism: Short Creek, 1953," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 23 (Summer 1990): 15-37; and Arizona State Dept. of Public Welfare v. Barlow et al, 296 P.2d 298 (Ariz. 1956). Some of the legal documents from this and the Vera Black case discussed below are reproduced in TRUTH at "Progress in the Courts," July 1954, 51-65; "Progress in the Courts," August 1954, 100-12. See also Guy Musser, "An Open Letter To The Honorable J. Howard Pyle - Governor of the State of Arizona," TRUTH, October 1954, 145-50 .

(110.) Ken Driggs, "Who Shall Raise the Children? Vera Black and the Rights of Polygamous Utah Parents," Utah Historical Quarterly, 60 (Winter 1992): 27-46. This case is the subject of my thesis for a 1991 Master of Laws degree from the University of Wisconsin Law School .

(111.) Levi S. Peterson, Juanita Brooks: Mormon Woman Historian (Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah Press, 1988), 246-49 .

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(112.) "Polygamy Debate Set For Today," Arizona Republic, 17 February 1955, 1 .

(113.) See "Arizona Pushes Proceedings in Short Creek Raid," 1A; and Editorial, "Police Action at Short Creek," Deseret News, 27 July 1953, 8A .

(114.) "LDS Leaders Uphold Action to Stamp Out Polygamy," Salt Lake Tribune, 8 March 1944, 1 .

(115.) Johnson sermons, 7: 93 .

(116.) "Sect Diminishes, Dixie Announces," Salt Lake Tribune, 18 April 1956, 19 .

(117.) For an interesting account of the fear that the 1953 Raid and the very public attempts to take Vera Black's children from her brought to Fundamentalist Mormon families, see In My Father's House .

(118.) The raid came the same day as an armistice in the Korean War. Still, the New York Times featured it on page one along with many other large papers. The raid was a prominent story in every major newspaper in the United States checked by the author .

(119.) In addition to public meeting halls, Mormons build much larger Temples that are not open to the public. These are considered sacred ground where secret religious ordinances are performed. The best known of these is the huge granite structure at the center of Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Only Mormons who hold "Temple recommends" which are renewed annually and signify faithfulness may enter temples .

(120.) Sam Roundy, Sr. was a 18 May 1995 witness in the Utah state court action over the UEP. Rulon T. Jeffs, et al v. Cora Fischer Stubbs, et al, case no. 89-2850, District Court of the Fifth Judicial Circuit in and for Washington County, Utah .

(121.) "A Study of Protest Against Adaptation." (122.) In 1991, David Yocom, Salt Lake County Attorney, told a reporter that because Fundamentalist Mormons did not seek marriage licenses from the government but went to religious authorities they recognized they were not violating bigamy statues. "If we're going after illegal cohabitation we'd have to line them all up--the older couple living together, young couples, even homosexual couples living together--all violate the bigamy/cohabitation law. People don't make complaints about polygamists or cohabitation, so we don't investigate, don't file charges," Yocom reportedly said. Bob Bernick Jr., "Is altering Utah Constitution's ban on polygamy worth the fight?," Deseret News, 11-12 September 1991, 8D .

(123.) Tom Zoellner, "Polygamy on the Dole," Salt Lake Tribune, 28 June 1998 .

(124.) Dirk Johnson, "Polygamists Emerge From Secrecy, Seeking Not Just Peace But Respect," New York Times, 9 April 1991, A8 .

(125.) See "Is altering Utah Constitution's ban on polygamy worth the fight?"; and Cherrill Crosby, "Panel Decides Not to Alter Provision on Polygamy," Salt Lake Tribune, 12 September 1991, B8 .

(126.) See in the Salt Lake Tribune: by Tom Zoellner, "Polygamy on the Dole," 28 June 1998; "Schools: Local Control, But Little Local Money," 28 June 1998, 1A; "Polygamy: Throughout its history, Colorado City has been home for those who believe in virtues of plural marriage," 28 June 1998; "Polygamy: the Guiding Principle," 28 June 1998; "Rulon Jeffs: patriarch, president, prophet for polygamy," 28 June 1998; Dawn House, "Prosecution of plural marriage a thorny issue for courts," 28 June 1998; "Polygamist Matriarch knows her place in Colorado City society," 28 June 1998; Harold Schindler, "1852 acknowledgment of doctrine was like tinder in parched land," 28 June 1998; Holly Mullen, "Why Welfare Officials Ignore Marital Status," 28 June 1998; David Ledford, "Letter From the Editor," 28 June 1998 .

(127.) Dan Njegomir, "Border towns embrace polygamy," Las Vegas Review-Journal, 11 December 1988, 1A; Bella Stumbo, "No Tidy Stereotypes. Polygamists: Tale of Two Families," Los Angeles Times, 13 May 1988; Doug J. Swanson, "Polygamists weigh price of isolation," Dallas Morning News, 14 April 1996, 1A .

(128.) In 1986, Jeffs declared that all those living on Trust lands were tenants at will. The next year the minority group went into federal court asking for a determination of their property rights. The federal court finally dismissed the action and it began again in Utah state courts. See a history of the case and the community as found by the trial court set out at Jeffs, et al. v. Stubbs, et al., 970 P.2d 1234, 1239-1240 (Utah 1998). See also Williams et al v. United Effort Plan et al., case no. 87c-1022J, United States District Court, Utah Central District and Jeffs, et al. v. Stubbs, et al., case no. 89-2850, District Court of the Fifth Judicial District in and for Washington County, Utah .

(129.) The case included a lengthy bench trial with testimony on the community's history, its religious beliefs and goals, and conflicting views of the property rights of UEP participants. In an order, the trial judge described the UEP organization as follows: The Work's leaders often preached that the purpose of the UEP was to advance the group toward the United Order, which was [an] economic concept taught in the scriptures held sacred by The Work. To accomplish this goal the UEP was intended to provide a means for all real property of the religious group to be held in common and for its use to be managed by a benevolent and inspired group of God-fearing leaders. Accordingly, it was not unusual for those occupying UEP lands or houses to be asked to move so those more needy or more deserving in the eyes of the trustees, or their agents, could take over the premises. Generally such requests were complied with willingly by the adherents to The Work. Some adherents to The Work built homes only to see the UEP move another family into the partially or fully completed structure. These occurrences were common knowledge in the community .

Memorandum decision, Jeffs et al v. Stubbs et al, dated 18 January 1996, 4-5 .(130.) In the Matter of W.A.T., et al, 808 P.2d 1083 (Utah 1991). See also Ken Driggs, "Utah Supreme Court Decides Polygamist Adoption Case," Sunstone, September 1991, 67-68; T. R. Reid, "The Adoption Case That Shook Utah," Washington Post, 15 March 1989, B1; Chris Jordensen, "Could Adoption Case Affect Polygamy's Future?," Salt Lake Tribune, 16 April 1989, B1; and Kathryn Casey, "Au American Harem," Ladies Home Journal, February 1990, 117, 167-70 .

(131.) See Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 1986), 212 .

(132.) James Brooke, "Utah Struggles With a Revival of Polygamy," New York Times, 23 August 1998, 12 .

(133.) The Los Angeles Times wrote that the "bizarre case shed light on an almost Gothic tableau of incest, polygamy and the messy consequences of divulging family secrets." Julie Cart, "Incest Trial Sheds Light on Polygamy in Utah," Los Angeles Times, 4 June 1999, A14 .

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(134.) See in the Salt Lake Tribune: Dawn House and Ray Rivera, "Paper Fortress Guards Kingston Clan Fortune," 16 August 1998. A-1; Editorial: "1998 Utahn of the Year," 27 December 1998; Ray Rivera and Greg Burton, "When Incest Becomes a Religious Tenent," 25 April 1999, A-1; Stephen Hunt, "The Law vs. Polygamy: What Next?," 6 June 1999, C-1; Kristen Moulton, "Lawyer Argues Polygamy Protected," 13 June 1999, C-2; Dan Harrie, "Feds Reject Grant for Ex-Polygamists," ].9 October 1999, D3. See also Julie Cart, "Tales of Abuse, Incest Frame `Utah's Dirty Little Secret'," Los Angeles Times, 15 August 1998, A-1; Andrew Murr, "Secrets in the Desert," Newsweek, 10 August 1998, 37; James Brooke, "Utah Struggles With a Revival of Polygamy," New York Times, 23 August 1998, 12; "Polygamist Is Convicted of Incest," New York Times, 4 June 1999, A23; Timothy Egan, "The Persistence of Polygamy," New York Times Magazine, 28 February 1999, 50-55; Greg Barrett, "Utah

and its polygamists race against time to end abuses" and "These ties bind after wedlock unravels," USA Today, 2 February 2000, 10D .

(135.) Stephen Hunt, "One of `Utah's Remarkable Mothers' Has Polygamous Past, Slips Out Back Door," Salt Lake Tribune, 2 May 1999, C-1. Ironically, her photo ran with the other twenty-four mothers recognized in the Salt Lake Tribune that had contributed so much toward the public hostility toward Fundamentalist Mormons. Governor Leavitt had earlier suggested that "that polygamy may be protected under the First Amendment of the Constitution," but retreated from the statement when it triggered a hot political reaction. See "Tales of Abuse, Incest Frame `Utah's Dirty Little Secret,'" A24 .

(136.) See Robert Gehrke, "Senate Oks Polygamy Probe," Salt Lake Tribune, 6 February 1999, A-4; Dan Harrie, "A GOP Lawmaker Says Polygamists Deserve an Apology," 12 October 1999, A-1.; Dan Harrie, "House Nixes Bill To Fight Crimes By Polygamists," Salt Lake Tribune, 28 January 2000, A-1; Editorial "Polygamy bills are unnecessary," Provo Daily Herald, 9 February 2000, A6; and "Utah Senate Approves Bill To Fight Polygamist Crimes," New York Times, 24 February 2000, A12. One national newspaper wrote that "[i]n what some say is a rushed effort to polish Utah's image before the 2002 Winter Olympic Games here, state lawmakers are attempting to clean up a thriving practice about which proponents and critics alike complain." See Gregg Barrett, "Utah and its polygamists race against time to end abuses," USA Today, 2 February 2000, 10D .

(137.) See Hilary Groutage, "Ruling Delayed On Foster Care," Salt Lake Tribune, 29 January 2000, D1; Dan Harrie, "House Approves Bill Banning Adoption By Gays," 24 February 2000, A8; Robert Gehrke, "Battle Lines Drawn on Gay Adoption Bills," 27 February 2000, C8; Editorial, "Intolerance on Adoption," 27 February 2000, AA1; Kathleen Kapos, "Adoption Law Faces Legal Tests," 17 March 2000, C6; and Hilary Groutage, "State Board Adopts Adoption, Foster Care," 1 April 2000, D4 .

(138.) Irwin Altman and Joseph Ginat, Polygamous Families in Contemporary Society (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 51 .

(139.) Tom Zoellner, "Polygamy on the Dole," Salt Lake Tribune, 28 June 1998, l2. See also James Brooke, "Utah Struggles With a Revival of Polygamy," New York Times, 23 August 1998, 12 .

(140.) Angie Parkinson, "Apocalyptic prediction may be circulating in FLDS church," The St. George Spectrum, 7 September 2000, Al; Robert Gehrke, "Polygamist sect growing more reclusive," Dallas Morning News, 17 September 2000, 51A; Julie Cart, "Parents Heed `Prophet,' Keep Kids Out of Schools," Los Angeles Times, 10 October 2000, Al .

(141.) See Greg Burton, "Polygamists Pull Kids From School," Salt Lake Tribune, 2 August 2000, B-1; "Polygamists are leaving public schools," Deseret News, 2-3 August 2000, B2; Hilary Groutage Smith, "Polygamists Heed Call; Enrollments Drop," Salt Lake Tribune, 22 August 2000, A-1; Mark Shaffer, "Town Split by Mormon Fight," Arizona Republic, 29 August 2000, A-1 .

(142.) The Los Angeles Times reported that "Church and community members have declined to be interviewed." "Parents' Heed `Prophet,' Keep Kids Out of Schools." (143.) One Catholic school principal told reporters part of the appeal of such schools was that "families are able to place their students in an environment where education is seen through the light of faith." Bob Sims, "Public Puts Its Faith in

Private: Parochial Schools Boom in Utah," Salt Lake Tribune, 29 August 2000, B-1 .

(144.) "Polygamy on the Dole," and Lynette Olsen, "Colorado City Airport soars to best in state," Daily Spectrum, 13 May 1992, 1 .

(145.) Doug J. Swanson, "Polygamists weigh price of isolation," Dallas Morning News, 14 April 1996, 1A .

(146.) Joe Garner, "Barlow University's opening fulfills 30-year dream," Rocky Mountain News, 17 February 1991, 93 .

(147.) For an interesting discussion of the legal and social pressures applied against religious groups outside the mainstream, see Philip Jenkins, Mystics and Messiahs Cults and New Religions in American History (Oxford: American Press, 2000) .

(148.) In 1998, Utah's chief Deputy Attorney General, Reed M. Richards, told the New York Times: "Do we want polygamy squads looking in the windows to see who is sleeping with whom? ... If you are not making any effort to prosecute fornication, adultery or gay people indulging in sodomy, why polygamy?" "Utah Struggles With a Revival of Polygamy." See also an interview with Scott Berry, a Salt Lake City attorney who represents Short Creek interests in Kristen Moulton, "Lawyer Argues Polygamy Protected," Salt Lake Tribune, 13 June 1999 .

(149.) Lisa Schnebly Heidinger, "Colorado City: A People on the Cusp of Time," Arizona Highways, August 1994, 36-44 .

(150.) While Hammon did claim the authority to succeed Johnson, newspaper coverage greatly inflated the possibility of violence. See Steve Daniels, "Colorado City remains peaceful despite fears of power struggle," Arizona Republic, 27 November 1988, 2A, and Loren Webb, "Controversy brewing over rightful heir," Spectrum, 2 December 1986, 3. See also Tom Zoellner, "Rulon Jeffs: patriarch, president, prophet for polygamy," Salt Lake Tribune, 28 June 1998 .

(151.) Ron Bitton, "Polygamist Leader Passes On," Sunstone, January 1987, 48 .

KEN DRIGGS (B.S. University of Florida; J.D. Mercer University; LL.M. University of Wisconsin) is a criminal defense lawyer specializing in the defense of death penalty cases in Georgia, Florida, and Texas. He has published several articles on Mormon legal history and Fundamentalist Mormons in a variety of journals including the Journal of Church and State. The author is currently writing a book about Fundamentalist Mormons. An initial version of this article was delivered as a paper at the annual meeting of the Mormon History Association on 16 May 1992, in St. George, Utah.

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