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At the state line along Utah State Route 59, between Zion and Grand Canyon National Parks, are the well-known twin polygamous communities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Arizona. Heading south into the open desert, with the red and buff sandstone headland Canaan Mountain looming to the east, few notice an unmarked, paved road that veers off to the right just south of town. This road leads to Centennial Park, a largely hidden polygamous enclave. In the early 2000s, the media firestorm that focused on Warren Jeffs and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) largely left Centennial Park untouched. Its residents, who call themselves “the Work” of Jesus Christ, purposefully stayed out of the spotlight for decades. But in 2003, women leaders of the community formed an organization called the Centennial Park Action Committee (CPAC) to educate outsiders about their unique form of plural marriage, community customs, and lives in what is sometimes called “the principle,” or the “New and Everlasting Covenant” of celestial marriage. Frustrated with media conflating all polygamous groups together with the FLDS in often sensationalized and one-sided accounts, women of the Work wanted to share their experiences and tell their own history in an effort to differentiate themselves from the FLDS and other groups practicing plural marriage. Risking potential costs to themselves and their community, CPAC leaders consciously decided to open to the outside world.
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Polygamy under the Red Cliffs: Women’s Voices and Historical Memory at Centennial Park
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Of the at least twelve organized fundamentalist Mormon groups in North America, some maintain very strict separation from the larger society, while others are integrated to a high degree into the mainstream. Centennial Park represents a group that has taken a middle approach between these poles. They have embarked on a path of selective adaptation to mainstream culture; the outreach and advocacy work of CPAC is part of this strategy. Their modern cultural history provides an important case study of a community whose practice of plural marriage differs
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