SALT LAKE CITY -- When the first Mormon settlers wandered into the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, they were on the run from public scrutiny, seeking to be left alone with their religion and polygamous lifestyle.
Now, with the Winter Games set to begin in Salt Lake City on Feb. 8, the Mormons are again being scrutinized.
Critics have accused Utah's dominant religion of exploiting the opportunity to be the host of an Olympics, while nervous organizers have struggled to keep the focus on the games.
The Mormons themselves have a different view. To them, it's all in God's hands.
After all, church founder Joseph Smith himself prophesied that his followers would build the New Jerusalem in the mountains, explains Elder Henry B. Eyring, one of the governing 12 apostles in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
"It goes clear back to the book of Isaiah, which says that Zion would be established at the tops of the mountains and that the nations of the world would come there," Eyring said. "Here we are in the tops of the mountains and people are coming up to see us. In a sense we expected it. Only the prophecies didn't say anything about downhill skiing."
To some, the idea of Olympics as divine prophecy might seem absurd. But since the church's founding in upstate New York in 1830, members have believed that God set them apart from the rest of the world.
Even today, when the church has 11 million members and is one of the world's fastest-growing faiths, Mormons still proudly call themselves, in the words of their president, "a peculiar people."
"I don't think we've changed at all. We're as peculiar as ever," Eyring said. "But we're getting larger and there are a lot more people who are as peculiar as we are. It's not as easy to laugh the church away."
It will be especially difficult during the Olympics, when the pale granite spires of the Mormon temple provide a backdrop for medal ceremonies, to be held at a plaza donated by the church. But most fans won't be able to see the inside of the building: Non-Mormons are barred from entering.
Although the mountains will be the real symbol of the games, NBC vice president David Neal said, the lights of Temple Square will certainly appear on camera.
"If we were doing the Olympic Games in Rome, the Vatican is something that you would see from time to time," Neal said. "That's really the case here in Salt Lake."
The church, which claims 70 percent of Utah's population as members, doesn't just dominate the skyline. The state's governor, two senators and three congressmen are Mormon, as is 90 percent of the state Legislature. Church members dominate boardrooms, school boards, and even the alcohol control bureau that designed the state's complex liquor laws.
In fact, the Salt Lake City Games probably have the greatest emphasis on religion since the modern Olympics began, said William Baker, a history professor at the University of Maine who wrote the book, "If Christ Came to the Olympics."
"On the one hand, you have the concern of Salt Lake City that it project itself not as a Mormon town but a modern city," Baker said. On the other, there's "the concern of the Mormons who hope that for God's sake, people will forget polygamy and racism as their heritage. The Mormons are trying to airbrush these realities in their history."
When Utah was awarded the Olympics, the church began a public relations blitz that included sending out lists of story ideas to some of the 9,000 members of the media expected during the 17 days of the games.
But since then, the church has backed off, dropping plans to pour millions of dollars into TV advertising and pulling missionaries from downtown streets and hotels. Mormon volunteers at Temple Square and residents putting up families of athletes have been warned to refer questions about religion to church experts.
"They're trying to do things with a light touch," said Stephen Pace, an activist for openness in the games and one of the church's most outspoken critics. "But in Utah politics, culture, economics, everything, the Mormon church is the 800-pound gorilla. It's kind of stupid to think that it's going to turn into an 87-pound figure skater for the duration of the games."
Even those watching at home will probably learn something about Mormons, who traditionally believe, among other things, that Jesus Christ visited the New World after the resurrection; that the Book of Mormon is a third testament of the Bible; that God was once a man; and that men who live right can be elevated to godhood.
They say that families can be reunited after death, and they research their genealogies to find dead ancestors who can be baptized retroactively. They have made mission work a priority: There are 60,000 Mormon missionaries on the job today, from the iconic young men on bicycles to elderly couples who spend their days doing temple service in foreign lands.
Mormons in good standing avoid alcohol, tobacco and coffee because Joseph Smith declared them unhealthy. They donate 10 percent of their income to the church, or face losing access to the temple. They believe their president is a living prophet, and they volunteer as church leaders because there are no professional clergy. They dress modestly, in part to cover up the special underclothes that adults wear every day of their lives.
Some of the darker issues in the church's past also grew out of the religion. Polygamy, for example, was based on Smith's declaration that men with more than one wife were given special standing in the afterlife.
The Mormon church outlawed the practice more than a century ago as a condition for Utah statehood, but the theology behind it hasn't changed. And today, an estimated 50,000 people around the West, many who say they follow true Mormonism, still practice polygamy.
Until 1978 the religion barred people of African descent from the priesthood, customarily granted to boys at age 12 and the prerequisite for all church offices.
So, while the games are giving the church an opportunity to explain itself, they're also calling attention to the church's past, which could backfire, said Jan Shipps, a non-Mormon scholar and author of "Sojourner in the Promised Land: Forty Years among the Mormons."
"There's been a tremendous amount of publicity," Shipps said. "Many people know more about Mormonism than they knew before. But what the perception will be as a result of the Olympics remains to be seen."
An Olympics scarred by scandal and tinged with fear opens with a proud new label in a city dominated by Mormons and mountains: America's Games.
A patriotic celebration just waiting to burst out, the Winter Olympics return to the United States for the first time in 22 years, eager to shed a troubled past and be embraced by crowds of flag-waving, cheering home fans.
European stars will come and win most of the medals, but these games will play to a United States much more patriotic because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Heartwarming ceremonies and a best-ever showing by the U.S. team could be exactly what the country needs.
It will unfold in the towering Wasatch Mountains and the valley below, under the tightest security imaginable. At a cost of nearly $2 billion, it will be the most expensive Winter Olympics ever.
But for 17 days beginning Feb. 8, it figures to be quite a show.
"It will be very powerful emotionally," Salt Lake Olympic chief Mitt Romney said. "I think people will go away and say, What a magical games.'"
If they do, it will be quite different than the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y., where it took the "Miracle on Ice" by the U.S. hockey team to help soothe a nation upset over the Iranian hostage crisis and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
Organizers call these the "healing games" in deference to the rest of the world. But NBC will wrap them around the American flag for television, and chants of "USA, USA" will reverberate in arenas and on the slopes.
Spectators will pay an average of $82 a ticket to endure traffic jams, security searches and long lines in the cold. Once they get in, they will cheer on the home team in events such as skeleton and short-track speedskating that Americans usually pay little attention to and know little about.
At night they'll party with hot chocolate and entertainers like the Dave Matthews Band in the shadow of the granite spires of the Mormon Temple that dominates downtown.
The slogan is "Light the Fire Within," and the games will celebrate the American West. But the world won't be left out.
Armed with plenty of antibiotics in case of an anthrax attack and enough booze to get around Salt Lake City's strict liquor laws, 75 countries will bring their best on frozen surfaces.
The Hermanator -- Austria skier Hermann Maier -- will be missing, but teammate Stephan Eberharter is a favorite in the downhill and Super G, and Germany's Hilde Gerg could sweep the same gold medals for the women.
Norwegians and Swedes will win more than their share in cross-country skiing, Germans will be among the favorites in all the sliding sports and Russia's Irina Slutskaya will try and deny Michelle Kwan a figure skating gold.
America won't be lacking, either, with speedskating sensation Apolo Anton Ohno, skier Bode Miller, and female bobsledders among the gold-medal favorites.
Then there's 1998 Olympic champion Jonny Moseley, planning to show off the Dinner Roll jump in which he flies off a mogul and rotates twice with his body parallel to the ground. The sport's lingo is almost as dizzying as his moves.
"If I can come down, throw a 360 mute grab up top, ski the middle clean, and do the Dinner Roll at the bottom with a bute grab, that's the run," Moseley said. "It's over. K.O. punch. Right there."
By the time the Olympics end Feb. 24, 2,654 athletes will have competed for 477 medals. The games have 10 more competitions than Nagano, and more athletes than any other Winter Games.
Women's bobsled makes its Olympic debut, along with the 1,500-meter freestyle race in cross-country skiing for men and women. Skeleton – a headfirst, belly-down version of luge for men and women -- returns for the first time since the 1948 Olympics.
Athletes, fans and officials will be guarded by a 16,000-member security force that includes sniper teams, Blackhawk helicopters, federal agents and volunteers ready for possible terrorism.
Officials say Salt Lake City will be the safest place in the country during the games, despite an Associated Press poll that says a third of Americans believe the games will be the target of terrorists.
"Terrorism will not prevail. Fear will not prevail," Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said.
The city's downtown high-rises have been wrapped in images of athletes, but to most residents the Olympic image is already one of barricaded streets and National Guardsmen on patrol.
A $310 million plan to protect the games -- much of it at taxpayer expense -- will give them a military look, although top Olympic officials hope that image will change when the games begin.
"All elements are in place to have excellent games," International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge said. "I'm quite sure the atmosphere will take over as it has taken over at all the previous difficult games."
Salt Lake City chased the games for more than three decades. To finally get them, frustrated organizers resorted to offering gifts and payments to IOC members, leading to a bribery scandal that brought down the first leaders of the organizing committee.
These were the "Scandal Games" when Romney took over a dispirited organization that was also in deep financial trouble in 1999. He turned it around, enlisting the Mormon church to help out, and the Olympics quickly became the "Mormon Games," a name city officials tried hard to shake.
"People think this is a boring, one-dimensional place where you can't get a drink and is full of polygamists running around," Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson said. "I don't think there's a doubt that there are huge misconceptions about Salt Lake City."
Many of those revolve around The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormons, who fled persecution to settle here in the mid-1800s. About 70 percent of the state's residents are members.
Among them is Romney, who enjoys telling the story of his great-grandparents as polygamists, and praises the church for donating a parking lot for the medals plaza and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir for the opening ceremonies.
"The Mormon Church is part of the fabric of this community and will be part of the story of the games. It would have been impossible for us to hold the games without the church," Romney said. "But I think the world is going to see a diversity here that will surprise some."
The church's stake in the games is huge. Mormon elder Henry B. Eyring said they are seen as the fulfillment of a prophecy.
"It goes clear back to the book of Isaiah, which says that Zion would be established at the tops of the mountains and that the nations of the world would come there," Eyring said. "Here we are in the tops of the mountains and people are coming up to see us. In a sense we expected it. Only the prophecies didn't say anything about downhill skiing."
Most of the estimated 220,000 visitors from outside the state, however, will be more interested in how fast someone is skiing or how well they are skating than taking the free tours at Temple Square in downtown.
NBC hopes a U.S.-based Winter Games will help it reverse the fall of recent Olympic ratings. The network, which paid $545 million for broadcast rights, is coming off the Sydney Olympics, which got the worst ratings since the 1960s.
Television viewers will get 3 hours of Olympics nightly on NBC, nearly half of it taped from the day's events, while hockey fans will enjoy six hours of games a day on CNBC. During the afternoon, MSNBC will show events that don't attract much attention in the United States.
And, of course, viewers will be offered features that introduce them to athletes they know nothing about.
"You need to go heavy, heavy on the storytelling, whether from the announcers or features, to let the public know who they should be rooting for," NBC sports chairman Dick Ebersol says.
In NBC's case, they want people rooting for Americans. The network ran promos leading up to the games featuring Neil Diamond's "Coming to America" and featuring the line, "This is my house."
Indeed, few Americans have heard of many of the athletes they will be cheering for over the next few weeks. Moseley's name might have a familiar ring because he won a gold in Nagano, and Picabo Street might be the most recognizable U.S. skier.
Then there's Kwan, who will be cast as a sympathetic figure in search of a gold medal that Tara Lipinski took from her four years ago in Nagano.
U.S. Olympic officials have set a goal of 20 medals, seven more than the country has won in any Winter Games. That might be conservative with the home-field advantage for perhaps the country's strongest team ever.