This is the continuation of the previous blog.
After we drove through the tunnel and hiked to Canyon Overlook, we drove through some of the area outside the park.
We stumbled upon Pipe Spring National Monument. There was a Visitors' Center and a museum so we went in. The monument is run through a joint effort of the National Parks Service and the Paiute Indians.
The water of Pipe Spring has made it possible for plants, animals, and people to live in this dry desert region because believe me, there is no other water within miles of this place. Ancestral Puebloans and Kaibab Paiute Indians gathered grass seeds, hunted animals, and raised crops near the springs for at least 1,000 years.
Pipe Spring was discovered and named by the 1858 Latter-day Saint missionary expedition to the Hopi mesas led by Jacob Hamblin. In the 1860s Mormon pioneers from St. George, Utah, led by James M. Whitmore brought cattle to the area, and a large cattle ranching operation was established. In 1866 the Apache, Navajo and Paiute tribes of the region joined the Utes for the Black Hawk War, and, after they raided Pipe Spring, a protective fort was constructed by 1872 over the main spring. The fort is still standing and the Rangers give a tour of the fort every half hour. The following year the fort and ranch was purchased by Brigham Young for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The LDS Bishop of nearby Grafton, Utah, Anson Perry Winsor, was hired to operate the ranch and maintain the fort. The fort was soon referred to as Winsor Castle.
This isolated outpost served as a way station for people traveling across the Arizona Strip, that part of Arizona separated from the rest of the state by the Grand Canyon. It also served as a refuge for polygamist wives during the 1880s and 1890s. The LDS Church lost ownership of the property through penalties involved in the federal Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887.
Although their way of life was greatly impacted by Mormon settlement, the Paiute Indians continued to live in the area and by 1907 the Kaibab Paiute Indian Reservation was established, surrounding the privately owned Pipe Spring ranch.
In 1923 the Pipe Spring ranch was purchased and set aside as a national monument to be memorial of western pioneer life. Today the Pipe Spring National Monument, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians Visitor Center, and Museum explain the human history of the area over time. The Paiute tribe runs a small adjoining campground. It has full hook-ups and looks fairly new. It's out in the middle of no where but nice.
The museum offers a 20 minute film with all this history presented by Paiute Indian descendants and Mormon descendants. I thought that was interesting because it comes from each viewpoint as it relates to their culture and religious beliefs.
We left there and drove to a town, Hildale, Utah. We went there because Mr. W had read somewhere that there was a hiking trail somewhere there. Well, we didn't find the trail, but we did find something "interesting."
Have you ever driven or walked or whatever through somewhere and things just didn't seem normal? Well, that's what happened in Hildale, Utah. We first noticed that almost all the homes had high fences around them. I'm talking 6 ft. fences. You couldn't see the yard or the house unless a gate was open. Of these homes, most had a section that looked like it was complete and had been that way for awhile. But each house had a section that had been added on or was in the process of being added on. You could tell by the materials on the outside of the house. Or at least the part of the house you could see.
We then started seeing children who looked like they were walking home from school. All of the girls, both elementary age and middle school age, were wearing long dresses with long sleeves and high necks and all the same color and fabric. All of the boys were wearing long sleeve button down shirts and slacks. This wasn't your normal school uniform. We then saw some adult women letting the kids in the gates of the houses and they were dressed just like the little girls. Long dresses, long sleeves, high necks, same color and fabric. At this point, I'm thinking that I'm in the town where the Stepford Wives lived. There was no commerce or industry in the town. We ended up driving down a road that we thought led up to a mountain road where the trail was. At the end of the road was a ranch where many of the children were walking to and it had signs posted to keep out, do not enter, private property, etc. I understand having the signs but it was almost like overkill on amount of signs that were posted. What was also strange was when we drove down the streets, the children stopped and stared and the women we saw grabbed their kids inside their yard and hurriedly shut their gates. I know you are probably thinking that all of this could be completely normal, but I'm telling you it wasn't. I told Mr. W that I got the feeling that things were going on in this town that shouldn't be going on. He agreed with me. So, when I got back, I did some research on Hildale, Utah.
Hildale is the headquarters of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS). (This is different and should not be confused with the more widely known Salt Lake City-based Latter Day Saints Church or Mormons.) Many adults in the community practice plural marriage. The United Effort Plan, the financial arm of the FLDS owns most of the property in the town. Since most government officials — including the police force — are FLDS members, some critics have likened the community's atmosphere to that of a prison, which is the result of attempts to discourage any of the town's women from attempting to leave the polygamous lifestyle.
Hildale, formerly known as Short Creek Community, was founded in 1913 by members of the Council of Friends, a breakaway group from the Salt Lake City-based The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church). The Council of Friends membership desired a remote location where they could practice plural marriage, which had been publicly abandoned by the LDS Church in 1890. Hildale, Utah, is a twin city to the better-known Colorado City, Arizona, both of which straddle the border between Utah and Arizona.
Hildale has a history of polygamy. The FBI raided Hildale/Colorado City in 1944 to break up a local polygamy ring, arresting 15 men. In 1953, law enforcement officials again raided Colorado City, arresting 23 men .After the death of their leader, Joseph W. Musser, in 1954, the community split into two groups. Those were the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, which stayed in Hildale/Colorado City, and the Apostolic United Brethren which relocated to Bluffdale, Utah. In January 2004, FLDS leader and prophet Warren Jeffs expelled a group of twenty men, including the mayor, and "reassigned" their wives and children to other men. Jeffs said he was acting on the orders of God, but the men he expelled claimed they were penalized for disagreeing with Jeffs. Observers say this is the most severe split to date within the community.
In 2001, the Los Angeles Times reported that welfare fraud is widespread in both Hildale and Colorado City. As many as half of plural wives are on government assistance. The fraud arises from the women's claims that they do not know the whereabouts of the children's fathers. Former State Senator Ron Allen remarked "The social costs of polygamy are quite high. The things I'm most worried about in polygamy are physical and sexual abuse of children, forced marriages among minors, welfare and tax fraud, and the diminished educational opportunities, especially among girls. None of this is acceptable."
The Colorado City/Hildale area has the world's highest incidence of fumarase deficiency, an extremely rare genetic condition which causes severe intellectual disability. Geneticists attribute this to the prevalence of cousin marriage between descendants of two of the town's founders, Joseph Smith Jessop and John Yates Barlow. At least half of the double community's inhabitants are descended from one or both men.
On March 20, 2014, a jury hearing the case of Cooke et al v. Colorado City, Town of et al ruled that the towns of Colorado City and Hildale had discriminated against Ronald and Jinjer Cooke because they were not members of the FLDS Church. The Cooke’s were awarded $5.2 million for "religious discrimination". The Cooke family moved to the area in 2008 but were refused access to utilities by the towns of Colorado City and Hildale. As a result of the ruling, Arizona's Attorney General Tom Horne issued a press release stating that he "wants to eradicate discrimination in two polygamous towns" and believes that the court ruling will give him the tools to do it.
OK, does anybody else not get why so many politicians/law enforcement/public figures know that polygamy is being practiced but is failing to do anything about it? Is it not against the law? What's wrong with this picture? Maybe it is not as easy to do something about it as it sounds.
Anyway, I told you that something wasn't right about this town and now you know. I wish I would have taken pictures.
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