Arizona, New Mexico & the Grand Canyon Trips (Lonely Planet, 1st Edition) - Aaron Anderson [106]
During Brigham Young’s 30-year tenure, the 1877 St George Temple was the only temple completed and in service. Unless you’re a member, entry’s barred, but you can admire the huge slabs of hand-chiseled rock, plastered and painted a glowing white. At night, uplighting makes the scene all the more ethereal. Exceptionally polite visitors center volunteers will happily answer questions. (Don’t worry, no one will try to convert you – unless you ask.) But note that members aren’t big on talking about polygamy these days. It’s no wonder, considering the crimes that have been associated with polygamous offshoot sects. If you want to get the real story, you’ll have to descend the back stairway and search through the stack at the Book Cellar. Margi and Karin stock frank Mormon and FLDS memoirs, and have some tales to tell themselves.
After dining on artisanal entrées at the Painted Pony, take your bedtime reading back to your room in the Seven Wives Inn, where the original owner of the 1873 Victorian sequestered polygamists fleeing persecution in a secret attic room. Stay in the “Jane” room and you’ll be sleeping under the same eaves where the current innkeeper’s ancestor once hid (yes, he did have seven wives).
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RELIVING HISTORY
Meet the big man, Brigham Young himself, with Historic St George Live! (www.stgeorgelive.org). Costumed docents lead bus tours to historic sights where noted 1870s residents tell their stories and answer questions. In addition to the church president, look for local missionary and farmer Joseph Hamblin.
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If day one was dedicated to mainstream Mormonism, day two represents the radical fringe. First stop is any superstore near St George, like the Walmart in Washington. Be respectful, but you’ll be hard pressed not to notice FLDS women cruising the aisles in ankle-to-wrist dresses, their long hair teased skyward and wrapped in a bun. What looks like several generations (mother, daughter, granddaughter) are likely to be “sister wives,” all married to one man.
Other than a proliferation of 17,000-sq-ft houses (for multiple wives and even more multiple children), the twin towns of Hildale-Colorado City on the Utah–Arizona state line appear pretty normal. But this is where FLDS leader Warren Jeffs imposed increasingly strict edicts in this polygamous community before his conviction in 2007 – including the widely reported actions of closing the schools, banning private books (TV had long been taboo), banishing teenage boys out onto the streets of St George and forcing girls as young as 13 to marry men 40 years their senior.
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DETOUR
Twenty miles from Colorado City, Pipe Spring National Monument (www.nps.gov/pisp) is quite literally an oasis in the desert. The constant supply of water attracted both Paiute Native Americans and Mormon settlers. During the late 1800s, the ranch here was a stop on the “Honeymoon Trail” – a route Arizona Mormons followed traveling to be married at the St George Temple.
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We don’t recommend driving around town too much; nonresidents have been followed and police are FLDS members. But do pop into the Merry Wives Café; it’s run by those in a less insular polygamist sect from Arizona. As you admire the large family portraits and the pastoral mural of women romping through a field hand-in-hand, it starts to sink in. Not much has changed in 150 years. Polygamy is still practiced, and it’s still stirring things up.
Lisa Dunford
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TRIP INFORMATION
GETTING THERE
From Las Vegas follow I-15 northeast 120 miles then take Utah exit 6 west into St George.
DO
Book Cellar
A fiercely independent bookstore in conservative country, Book Cellar carries roughly 20,000 new and used titles. 435-652-0227; www.sgbookcellar.com; 130 N Main St, St George; 10am-5pm
Brigham Young Winter Home
The furnishings aren’t all original, but this house museum