Max Tracks: Going to border towns that once shunned visitors and where FLDS reigned
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HILDALE, Utah — The Short Creek communities of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona are closer to Zion National Park than I knew. The Smithsonian Butte Scenic Back Country Byway begins just outside of Zion and ends in the town of Apple Valley, just up the road from the border towns.
It’s an area I’ve never explored, though my colleagues Ben Winslow and Nate Carlisle have covered the polygamous communities expertly for years. My dog Chaco and I stayed in an inexpensive bunkhouse at Gooseberry Lodges in Apple Valley. I could pass up a room for 40 bucks and passed up the fancy bunkhouses that had their own bathrooms to claim the deal. (There were nice bathrooms and showers next door.)
Hildale and Colorado City sit in the shadow of red rock buttes. It’s a setting equal to other popular tourist towns in Utah, but the difference is evident as you drive along Highway 59.
Think about small towns in rural Utah. Drive through Moab, Torrey, or Bluff, or even larger cities that don’t have interstates like Logan and Vernal. They make sure the highway runs through town. It’s their main street. It’s because they want visitors and their dollars.
But it was a reclusive religious sect that built Hildale and Colorado City adjacent to Highway 59. The route connects the two most popular national parks in the western United States: the Grand Canyon and Zion.
Turning into Colorado City, it’s not obvious where the businesses are, though the place is clearly changing. There’s new construction around every corner. Modern apartments sit next to sprawling homes and cinderblock walls built for the polygamous families of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the FLDS.
As Chaco and I meandered looking for the town square, I thought about my colleagues’ reporting on the “lost boys” — actually young men, effectively exiled because the math of polygamy meant many would never find a partner.
I thought about our reporting on the young women, forced to marry in their early to mid teens.
The FLDS Church’s influence waned as the man they called prophet, Warren Jeffs, was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl. That was in 2011.
Content retrieved from: https://www.fox13now.com/max-tracks/max-tracks-going-to-border-towns-that-once-shunned-visitors.
