(Second of three parts)
The Mormon presence in Colorado City dates back to an apocryphal anecdote involving church prophet Brigham Young.
Legend has it that in the 1850s, Young was returning to Salt Lake City from a visit to the pioneer settlement of Pipe Springs, 20 miles east of present-day Colorado City. Young instructed his buggy driver to stop at the top of Cedar Ridge and, as he looked down over the Short Creek area, declared, “This will someday be the head and not the tail of the church. These will be the granaries of the Saints.”
When the church disavowed polygamy in 1890 and began to excommunicate those who would not give up the practice, a group of stalwarts settled in remote Short Creek (now Colorado City) and called themselves the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Colorado City’s remote location and the low profile kept by residents allowed the church to prosper. Law enforcement authorities have tried three times, all without success, to wipe out the open practice of polygamy in Short Creek. The last incident was the infamous 1953 Short Creek raid. After the raid, the town’s name was changed to Short Creek in Arizona and Hildale in Utah, to avoid association with the event.
Since the traumatic raid, life in Colorado City has settled into a relatively quiet routine. But recent events, both inside and outside the community, have raised the profile of the town and threatened the lifestyle of its residents.
Utah’s successful prosecution of polygamist Tom Green brought media attention to the town although Green does not live in Colorado City. Green, who has five wives and 30 children, was convicted in May of four counts of bigamy and one count of failure to pay child support. He is due to be sentenced Aug. 24 and could face 25 years in prison.
In another legal case, in 1998 a 15-year-old Utah girl fled an arranged polygamous marriage to her uncle and was belt-whipped by her father in retaliation. The men were both prosecuted and the uncle was sentenced to 10 years in prison for unlawful sexual conduct and incest.
The winter Olympics coming to Salt Lake City in 2002 has also brought media attention to Utah and international journalists are already scrutinizing the region’s polygamist communities.
While Colorado City is believed to be the largest polygamous community the United States, Utah officials estimate that about 30,000 people live polygamously in the state and about 80,000 in the country.
The organization Tapestry Against Polygamy, a group of women who have left polygamous marriages and lobby for laws and action against the practice, has also brought unwanted attention of the quiet hamlet.
Inside the closed community, an edict from aging church leader Rulon Jeffs, announced through his son Warren Jeffs, resulted in many of the town’s families withdrawing their children from public schools.
Jeffs’ edict followed an internal split within the order and the formation of a splinter group in neighboring Centennial Park.
Jeffs reportedly told his followers to avoid the negative outside influences in the schools, and by Centennial Park residents, by home-schooling or sending their kids to one of about 10 private schools in the area.
The mass exodus brought criticism on the town but town leaders say they just wanted to teach values and religion to their kids in school and couldn’t do that in a public institution.
“We tried to work with the school district people; they ignored us,” said Hildale Mayor David Zittig. “Finally, we had no choice.”
Enrollment at Phelps Elementary School in Hildale dwindled to 15 at the end of last year, said Washington County Schools Superintendent Kolene Granger. The school, which opened in 1986, once served 350 students.
In order to gather enough children to run a school, the 15 remaining Hildale students will join the handful of remaining students at the Colorado City school next fall.
Colorado City Mayor Dan Barlow echoed Zittig in defending the removal of students from public schools in order to include religion in the curriculum.
“We decided we’d take responsibility for schooling our own children,” he said.
The town is an ideal place to raise children, he said.
Thanks to residents’ strong family values and religious dedication, there is less crime and fewer drug problems in Colorado City than in any other community in the state, Barlow said.
“All in all, people are living happily,” he said.
Originally dependent upon farming and ranching, the area’s economics have changed in the past decade as those industries become less profitable.
Most of the town’s young men work in the construction field, according to Barlow. He said the six general contracting companies in the twin towns send crews across the West on construction jobs. Apart from construction, some small industry has cropped up, including two cabinet manufacturing businesses and a ceramic fireplace log business.
Money earned by the men goes to the United Effort Plan, a charitable trust formed in 1942 that owns most of the land in the town. The trust allots plots of land for church members in good standing to build their rambling homes upon.
Still, the town is heavily dependent upon welfare dollars. According to Mohave County Supervisor Buster Johnson, Colorado City receives about $8 for every tax dollar it pays, compared to about $1.22 in Kingman.
Despite the apparent poverty, the town has grown steadily and, with its large families, consistently has the largest households and youngest median age in the state.
Census 2000 figures, which Barlow says are low, puts the population of Colorado City at 3,334, and the average household size at 7.51 people.
Family size is directly related to one’s standing in the church.
FLDS men are assigned wives at the whim of the prophet. Women are deemed to be of marrying age when they are “developed.”
Fundamentalist Mormon men believe that having multiple “celestial wives” will grant them access to the highest reaches of heaven. For the women, a pass to heaven comes from being devout and totally subservient to their husbands.
To those who criticize their way of life, Barlow and Zittig say they’re just law abiding Americans exercising their freedom of religion.
“People would be better to leave (us) alone,” Zittig said.
Population:
Census 2000 reported 155,032 people living in Mohave County and 3,332 people (two percent of the county's population) in Colorado City. Census reports show 444 households in Colorado City, 83 percent of the households reported including children under 18 years old; 85 percent were headed by a married parents; the average size of the household was the highest in the state at 7.51 people and average family size of 7.58 people. By comparison, the average size household in the state was 2.64 people and in Kingman that number was 2.47 people. Sixty percent of the population of Colorado City is under age 18 with the median age being 14. Statewide the median age is 34.2 years old with 26 percent of the population under age18. In Kingman, those figures are 25 percent and 39.6 years old.
Food Stamps:
In March, $1,040,952 worth of food stamp coupons were issued in Mohave County. Of that, $170, 280 were issued to Colorado City residents. Colorado City residents received 16 percent of the total value of Food Stamps issued in Mohave County.
Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System (indigent health care):
In April there were 21,134 Mohave County residents enrolled in AHCCCS; 12 percent of the enrollees (2,630 people; 79 percent of the town's population) were Colorado City residents.