Polygamy Under the Red Cliffs

Polygamy Under the Red Cliffs: Women’s Voices and Historical Memory at Centennial Park

BY MARK E. DEGIOVANNI MILLER

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.

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 significantly from and represents a progressive, middle-ground approach among various Mormon fundamentalist sects. Taking an ethnographic approach, augmented with primary and secondary sources to verify historical claims and other statements, this article examines this cultural history as CPAC women present it. In a larger fundamentalist Mormon culture dominated by male voices and authority, women of the Work began to negotiate their roles as supporters of polygamy, using history—particularly the devastating mid-twentieth-century government raids on their community—to formulate their positions and to detail women’s agency and empowerment as they feel it exists in Centennial Park.1

Priscilla Hammon and the CPAC committee. Priscilla and her husband, a son of J. Marion Hammon, were central to the founding of Centennial Park. She and her husband helped build the community. Priscilla is a founder of CPAC and a vocal spokesperson in the organization to the present. Courtesy of CPAC.

Establishing CPAC

When women formed CPAC, polygamy, or more correctly polygyny—a man having more than one wife—was in the national spotlight. Popular television shows routinely highlighted individuals harmed by Warren Jeffs and other leaders of the FLDS, from underaged girls forced into marriages to much older men to sexual assault, fraud, and other crimes. Programs often conveyed stereotypes about women in plural marriages. The women of Centennial Park believed that these media programs did not reflect their experiences.2

One of CPAC’s creators, Maryann, a woman in her early sixties who lives in a household with her husband and his three other wives (“sister wives”), recalls that the actual catalyst for the initiative was the Polygamy Summit organized by the Utah Attorney General’s office in St. George, Utah, in 2003.3 “We always knew that people looked at us as a problem, but we had kind of lived a life and wondered why we were looked at as a problem.” On the attention given the FLDS, Maryann says, “We have determined that it’s necessary for us to speak up, because I think most people just put all polygamists into one pot and feel like we all believe the same things. It’s Warren Jeffs-equals-polygamy in the minds of the masses. We have an even greater job to do to stand up and say, ‘No, that’s not the belief system that we hold to.’” Although she was raised in the fundamentalist community at Colorado City, Maryann felt it changed drastically under Warren Jeffs. “What I see in the FLDS today is as foreign to me as anything I’ve ever known as far as religion goes.” On the importance of the summit in St. George, Maryann notes:

There was so much negative attention brought to polygamy and to our lifestyle that when we read about the summit that was being held in St. George, we got together as ladies and decided that maybe it’s time for us to stand up and be heard. . . . We just showed up unannounced, and so we started filing in, and there weren’t enough chairs, and pretty soon there were a hundred plural wives all around the outside of the room just standing, lining the walls. . . . Our whole purpose of being there was that we did not want them to talk about us without us [present]. That was our first opportunity . . . to stand up and speak for ourselves following the 1953 raid. Our mothers came home from that raid, buried their heads in the sand, and started raising large families and figured if we just kind of lived our lives under the radar that the law would leave us alone again.4

Another CPAC organizer, Nadine, a professional educator, summarizes the group’s purpose: “We just felt like if we just went down the road, people would eventually realize we’re just human beings.”5

FLDS, Government Raids, and Historical Memory

The physical proximity of Centennial Park to Colorado City is no accident. The two communities and their histories are closely related. Both trace their origins to the early Mormon fundamentalist movement and the founding of Short Creek (later Colorado City) in the 1920s and early 1930s. Decades before, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints had publicly disavowed polygamy. In 1890 Wilford Woodruff, president of the church, issued his famous “Manifesto” discontinuing plural marriages. Fundamentalists did not believe the 1890 Manifesto was a revelation from God, however; they continued the practice. Scholars have documented, and the LDS church now acknowledges, that hundreds of post-1890 plural marriages were approved by church leaders until 1904 when the church president Joseph F. Smith officially prohibited them.6 After that, LDS leaders engaged in a campaign to locate and excommunicate polygamists. As such, fundamentalist Mormon leader John Y. Barlow and others established the community of Short Creek at an isolated high desert location along the Utah–Arizona border so they could live the principle of plural marriage in relative peace. Residents established the United Effort Plan (UEP), a common law trust, to hold land in common for followers. In time, the rising polygamist enclave caught the attention of mainstream Mormon leaders. Members of the community were excommunicated en masse in 1935.7

During the early 1940s, fundamentalist leaders instructed J. Marion Hammon from St. Anthony, Idaho, who was then in his early thirties, to move to Short Creek to oversee the trust. The creation of the UEP allowed the Priesthood Council, a body that presided over most fundamentalists in Utah until a major split in the leadership in 1952, to govern the community as a small theocracy. At least for a time, Short Creek’s isolation kept state authorities from interfering. Residents of Short Creek retained close ties to other practitioners of plural marriage in the Salt Lake City area during these years.8

In 1935 Utah passed the nation’s strictest anti-polygamy law, significantly increasing the penalty for cohabitation to a felony with a maximum sentence of five years. That year the first raid on Short Creek occurred. Almost a decade later, in 1944, the FBI engaged in a second and even larger raid, arresting almost all major fundamentalist leaders across Utah, including John Y. Barlow and about fifty others. Many were convicted and sentenced to five years in prison; after serving up to seven months, fundamentalist leaders were released after vowing to end their practice of polygamy. But most went back to their old lives living plural marriage. This intransigence and other issues led directly to the Short Creek Raid of 1953, the most significant event of the fundamentalists’ early history.9 It has had the most lasting impact on the collective memory of the people at Colorado City and Centennial Park.

Polygamist family in Short Creek, Mohave County, Arizona, 1953. The same year this photo was taken the Arizona state government raided the community, prosecuting the men and taking into custody the women and children. Although the case against them was eventually dismissed, and the members of the community returned to their homes, the ordeal became seared in the community’s memory. Utah State Historical Society photograph no. 14943.

At 1:00 a.m. on the morning of July 26, 1953, over one hundred Arizona National Guard members and law enforcement officers stormed the town.10 Later that day, Arizona Governor J. Howard Pyle declared the roundup a success in a radio address, saying the state “has concluded a momentous police action against insurrection within its borders. . . . It mobilized and used its total police power to protect the lives and future of 263 children. They are the product and the victims of the foulest conspiracy you can imagine,” a whole “community dedicated to the production of white slaves.”11 Members of CPAC still recall the hurtful rhetoric used by state officials and the trauma the raid inflicted on their community. Maryann was directly impacted, as a young girl of seven years. As she emotionally relates:

My mother had been taken away in a 1953 raid, when Arizona [officials] came into the town; then the town was called Short Creek. And he came in, full force, Governor Pyle from Arizona with a hundred law enforcement officers at 4 o’clock in the morning and raided the community. . . . There was [sic] about one hundred officers that came in from Mesa and Phoenix, I guess it was every officer they could possibly find. Two officers came to our door and pounded on it and said, “Open up or we’ll break the door down.” It was just my mother and three little girls. I remember sitting up out of our bunk beds and she opened the door and the officers came in and started [rummaging] through all our stuff. They were looking for evidence against my father to put him in jail. Through the course of the day, they told us we needed to go down to the school. The officers were there and they put my father, and all the fathers, and locked them up in our school kitchen. I remember standing on an old table that was outside the window. The kitchen window had a screen that was broken, and I stood there and held his hand and he said, “Always remember that I love you, and always remember to say your prayers.”

The ordeal of suffering through an armed police raid and witnessing their fathers arrested and taken away would leave lifelong scars on people of the community. Maryann’s mother was eight months pregnant at the time. As Maryann remembers, “Within three days all of the mothers and children on the Arizona side had been taken by bus to Phoenix to be dispersed among better families, so to speak, in their minds, where they might be able to eventually adopt out the children and jail all of the fathers and do away with polygamy once and for all.”12 Nadine still bristles when she thinks about how the dominant culture at the time of the raid— and to this day—looks down upon her faith. She is dismayed by what she considers a callous disregard of human rights. Nadine believes that even today, despite multiculturalism, it is acceptable for others to show prejudice toward her faith and to feel they know what is best for her people’s children.13 These feelings originated with the 1953 raid. As Maryann relates about her experience:

After we got to Phoenix, they pulled all the women and children aside and they told my mother to get on a milk truck. . . . We just rode with the milk man until we got to the people’s residence. . . . We knocked on the door and Mrs. Rogers opened the door and she just took one look at us and there was my mother eight months’ along and three little girls and the first thing she said was, “Oh, I ordered a boy.” . . . We were taken to . . . a little shed as our home that . . . barely fit two single beds in it. Just three weeks after we got there, my mother went into labor. Mrs. Rogers just took her to the hospital and dropped her off at the steps of the hospital and said, “Sorry I can’t do any more for you, you’ll have to go in on your own from here.” . . . [Mother] was in labor so they put her out so that she wasn’t aware when the baby was born. And they didn’t allow her to see our baby sister for 48 hours. She kept asking them why. We found out a week after (from a lawyer) that the reason was that they planned to destroy all the paperwork and adopt all the kids out and they didn’t want her to get attached to the baby.

Unidentified members of the Short Creek community, photograph taken at the time of the July 1953 raids. The boy’s smile for the camera belies the trauma that the raid inflicted on members of the FLDS community. Salt Lake Tribune Negative Collection, MSS C 400, photograph no. 26750.

Instead of the intended effect of breaking the community, the state actions hardened its members’ resolve to survive. After the failed placement with Mrs. Rogers, Maryann with her mother and siblings moved to various places in Arizona and northern Utah. It took them fourteen years to make their way back to Colorado City.14 Nearly three hundred men and women were taken into state custody; for over 160 women and children, like Maryann’s mother, it took two years or more before they made it back home.15

The raids against members of the FLDS were psychologically damaging to community members, especially young children like Maryann. Nadine has remarked that the raids damaged trust between the community and the state.16 The 1953 raid, in particular, left a mark on public opinion and a lasting impression on officials in both Utah and Arizona who feared a repetition of bad publicity. Photographs of children separated from their parents disturbed many in the general public. The 1953 raid was denounced in the Arizona state house, with one senator calling it the “blackest blot” on the state’s history. Governor Pyle later remarked that the raid ruined his political career.17 For the next half century, the state retreated from vigorous enforcement of anti-polygamy laws, although public sentiment against plural marriage remained decidedly negative. In the 2010s, state officials in Utah and Arizona publicly stated that they would not prosecute otherwise law-abiding citizens for the crime of polygamy. From the 1950s into the 1980s, Arizona did not entirely leave the group alone, however; it periodically challenged polygamists teaching in the public schools and serving as law enforcement officers in the community. The raids feature prominently in the historical memory of the fundamentalists.18

The Split and Genesis of Centennial Park

As a sign of their resilience and of the breathing room allowed by the states’ hands-off approach, by the late 1950s and into the 1970s the fundamentalists once again thrived on the Utah–Arizona border. To signal a new start after the stigma of the 1953 raid, the town changed its name to Colorado City in 1961.19 Nadine remembers, “As the community gathered together after the raids, in the sixties we had . . . ‘the Golden Era.’ There was just an immense amount of growth, a lot of community togetherness into the early seventies.” Under Marion Hammon’s leadership, Colorado City prospered, with its residents constructing large sprawling homes and operating agricultural and construction businesses. The town was hooked up with electricity, modern water and sewage systems, and telephone services. The fundamentalists built a modern school, the Academy, to educate their children.20

While Colorado City was modernizing, a significant division emerged in the community between the followers of Hammon and the supporters of Rulon T. Jeffs. An accountant from Sandy, Utah, Jeffs was caring for the ailing Leroy S. Johnson, a founder of Short Creek who had succeeded to senior apostle of the Priesthood Council in 1954. Although the most senior apostle was its head, holding the important authority to call a new apostle upon the death of a member, the council essentially held its authority in common; each member could authorize and perform plural marriages and other ordinances. By the early 1980s, President Johnson, affectionately called “Uncle Roy” by his followers, was still the senior apostle, followed in seniority by Hammon and next Jeffs. Johnson was in his nineties, however, and extremely ill with shingles. At the time Uncle Roy was still revered by the people who later settled Centennial Park, but he was rarely seen and rarely spoke in public. The women of the Work believe that in his weakened state, Johnson came under the control of Jeffs. A rumor arose that Johnson proposed bypassing Hammon as senior apostle upon his own death in favor of Jeffs using an obscure theory known as the “One Man Doctrine.” It proposed that only one man on earth had complete authority from God to lead the people in both temporal and spiritual affairs. Marion Hammon and his ally on the council, Del Timpson, publicly rejected the One Man Doctrine. At a rare appearance at church in 1984, Johnson rose and denounced Hammon and Timpson, expelling them from the council.21

The Academy building in Centennial Park, 1986. The fact members built a school as one of the first community buildings demonstrates the importance of education to the congregation. Courtesy of Centennial Park Action Committee.

Centennial Park was established in the resulting schism within the Priesthood Council over Johnson’s plan to name Rulon Jeffs the One Man prophet of the faith. In 1984, Johnson and Jeffs eliminated Hammon and Timpson as trustees of the UEP, removed them from their roles at the Academy, and later evicted them and their followers from their own homes.22 Nadine relates how her people view the priesthood split. “It’s a leadership question. They have a one man prophet. We have a council of clergy. That’s the core of the split. They wanted . . . to empower one man [Rulon Jeffs] completely. We had a belief in a council of clergy, and that difference is what caused the initial separation.” Nadine and others firmly believe they are holding true to fundamentalist Mormon teachings by retaining council rule.23

After being expelled from the council, the school, and their homes, Hammon and Timpson’s group sued the UEP trust for ownership of the Academy and homes that they had built with their own hands and savings. However, they only received a life estate in their homes, meaning they could only live in them until their deaths but could not own them outright. The ruling convinced Hammon and Timpson that they needed to form their own town.24 In short order, Johnson and Jeffs’s group, composed of about 80 percent of the original community, incorporated both the town of Colorado City in 1985 and the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1991.25 After Johnson’s death in 1986, Rulon Jeffs claimed the role of One Man prophet of the faith, a position he held until his death in 2002. Rulon’s son Warren succeeded him as prophet of the FLDS. The One Man Doctrine enabled both Rulon and Warren Jeffs to take almost complete control over the FLDS church.26

Establishing the Community of Centennial Park

Because most of the Hammon and Timpson followers still lived and had businesses in Colorado City, they looked for a new place to settle nearby. With help from a fundraising campaign among members, they bought a ranch of approximately one thousand acres to build Centennial Park.27 Jeffs’s followers had tried to block the sale for fear of what they considered an “apostate” group living nearby. Jeffs thereafter ordered his people to shun their former congregants. The new community set up an entity, the Deseret Trust, to hold the land in common. It soon became clear to leaders, however, that they could lose individual lots to sheriff sales if occupants failed to pay taxes. As a result, the Priesthood Council decided to have individual titles issued for each lot. In contrast, Rulon and later Warren Jeffs utilized their control of the UEP trust lands to evict rivals and any person who fell out of favor with their leadership.28

The Centennial Park group dedicated its new town on September 27, 1986, one hundred years to the day after LDS church president John Taylor had purportedly received a revelation to never surrender plural marriage; they named it Centennial Park in its honor. Centennial Park grew into a neatly kept, prosperous community of approximately twelve hundred residents. Followers of the Work also have a congregation in the Salt Lake City area, with both groups totaling approximately two thousand.29 The town was designed with streets in a grid pattern, many named after their leaders. In time, all the streets were paved. Land was set aside near the entrance of Centennial Park for a commercial center, eventually housing a health clinic, some small stores, and a grocery store. Unlike those in Colorado City, the businesses were privately owned. Centennial Park’s modern and prosperous appearance stands in stark contrast to the dirt roads and often dilapidated, unfinished houses of nearby Colorado City.30 Maryann, who still lives in Colorado City with a life estate on her home, elaborates on the differences between the two towns:

Centennial Park is much newer than Colorado City, so if you drive through . . . you’ll see a vast difference of the housing conditions. In Colorado City, [homes are] still on the UEP Trust property . . . and the state regulates that now because of Warren [Jeffs’s imprisonment]. By default, they [have lost many homes]. Because we were built on the trust property, we’re not able to go get loans to finish our homes in Colorado City . . . whereas in Centennial Park, people have been able to finish their houses. It’s subdivided and in your deeds, and that allows them to finish their homes. And they just live by a little higher standard all the way around.31

From the start, the cultural and social heart of Centennial Park was its worship hall, one of the first buildings built and dedicated in 1986 and still used for weekly services. A basic two-story unadorned white stucco structure, it holds the whole congregation. Services are presided over by the six members of the Priesthood Council who sit on a stage with other church leaders. The officiating apostle selects speakers from the council or male priesthood holders from the congregation who talk about devotion, responsibility, and, often, their town’s history. A large choir of men and women sing from seats at the back of the stage. Women of the Work emphasize that anyone is welcome to attend services and learn about their faith.32

Theological Basis for Plural Marriage

CPAC leaders are well versed in the history and theological underpinnings of plural marriage, knowing that their practice of polygyny is the primary reason for the existence of their community and its separateness from the surrounding society. Centennial Park traces its origins to the teachings of Lorin C. Woolley. In the late 1920s, Woolley claimed to have been present at an 1886 meeting where President John Taylor announced a revelation he had received about continuing plural marriage and ordained Woolley and four others to a council with authority to continue performing and sealing plural marriages.33 The scholar Brian C. Hales notes that the 1886 revelation, which LDS leaders later dismissed as fraudulent, appears to have been written in Taylor’s hand and “seems to be genuine.”34 Followers of the Work are taught about the 1886 revelation and council ordination from an early age.

Nadine and others believe they are following the original teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints founder Joseph Smith. When in 1890 Woodruff issued the Manifesto expressing his intention to abide by and to encourage others to adhere to the anti-polygamy laws of the land, the women at Centennial Park believe the church had corrupted itself by making compromises to American culture and its government. CPAC leaders believe that the mainstream LDS church is straying from the true path.35 Nadine recalls what she has been taught about the 1890 Manifesto and LDS church president Joseph F. Smith’s Second Manifesto of 1904, which strictly abandoned the practice of plural marriage. “The 1890 Manifesto was a proclamation to the world, and it wasn’t [listed as] a revelation . . .

so we didn’t feel like it was one. The mini manifesto, the declaration that came in 1904 by Joseph F. Smith, was more of an adamant stand, but . . . hasn’t been canonized by the church either, and there were marriages after that.”36 Most scholars of Mormon polygamy recognize that hundreds of polygamous marriages were approved by a member of the First Presidency post-1890, mostly in Canada and Mexico, but the 1904 Manifesto clearly banned the practice; two apostles, Matthias F. Crowley and John W. Taylor, were removed from the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles for refusing to abide by the 1904 Manifesto.37 As Nadine’s comments reveal, women of the Work believe that they are following God’s law of plural marriage and are thus justified in breaking the laws of the land and operating outside mainstream convention.

Community Life in Centennial Park

The women of Centennial Park, while noting they live outside the law regarding plural marriage, take pride that they reside in a prosperous, patriotic, law-abiding community.38 Their people’s business acumen is a special point of pride. They remark that several men on their Priesthood Council are very wealthy. One council member is, in fact, a multimillionaire who owns a major hotel chain. He has a mansion in Centennial Park and a personal plane to fly him to business appointments. Besides this man’s home, the town also has many other extremely large houses, testifying to the prosperity of members. In 2020, one house owned by the Knudson family was valued at $2.4 million, while another owned by the Timpson family was valued at $1.5 million. Most residents are engaged in the building trades. Residents have established cabinet shops, poultry businesses, landscaping firms, and even a candy-making enterprise. Entrepreneurship and job creation are celebrated in the community.39

A central institution that helped build the town of Centennial Park and binds the community together across generations is the “work mission” young men choose to undertake after high school. Started by town founder Marion Hammon in the 1950s, missionaries perform volunteer labor in Centennial Park or paid labor in nearby towns, donating their pay to the church, in return for room and board in a community member’s home. Nephi, a grandson of Hammon, says that young men agree to do a work mission in part to give back time to their community but also as a way to prove they are serious about their faith. A mission typically lasts two years, but some can last for four years or longer.40 The women of CPAC also view work missions as a vital form of vocational training. Darlene explains the perceived benefits: “I have a couple of missionaries who are living with me and they’re in construction; they have worked for Salisbury Homes and a bunch of other big builders in southern Utah and in framing concrete. They have had a lot of opportunity to learn and to be an apprentice in those fields.”41

Women of the Work emphasize the importance of education for their children and their community. The town’s Masada Charter School, a public institution for kindergarten through ninth grade, is a point of pride for the community. Maryann gives some background on education:

From about the early 1960s, we were able to build our own academy, a private high school that’s still functioning in Centennial Park today. I graduated from there [and my husband did]. . . . Our family has graduated 15 students from there so far, and they have gone further into education at the surrounding colleges. . . . For many years, the polygamist culture was accused of not valuing education of our children. We do, we highly value education for our children. We also have the new Mohave Community College out there in Colorado City.42

In 2008 the Masada School received a Blue Ribbon award from President George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind program. Nadine and others emphasize that their people have valued education for generations and are continuing the educational traditions of their ancestors. Warren Jeffs, in contrast, ordered the Colorado City public schools shuttered in the early 2000s; the FLDS then focused on homeschooling, teaching only religiously themed lessons.43

Centennial Park parents encourage their children to pursue higher education as well. Like most parents, they hope their offspring will return to the community. But as Nadine remarks, they do not fear that their children will gain an education and then leave fundamentalism, as stereotypes about polygamists portray.44 Some have studied engineering and have come back to teach math; others have studied medicine, nursing, dentistry, or business management and returned to serve the community. Many students recently such as Merilee and Mathew attended Southern Utah University and returned to Centennial Park to further the community’s development.45 Nadine provides an example of how her professional growth was seen as a family affair, including the input of her sister wives:

Aerial view of the Masada school and Centennial Park, 2004. Courtesy of CPAC.

When I did my master’s degree, we . . . made the decision for me to go do it as a family. What I told the family is “I will go, and I will do this as quickly as I can.” I signed up for a bunch of credits, and my dean said, “You can’t do that.” And I said, “Is there a policy against having that many credits?” “No, there’s just no way you can do a master’s program with that many credits in a semester.” “Oh, I’m not your regular person. You don’t know my life.” I went that whole year. I didn’t fix one meal, I didn’t do one batch of laundry, and I didn’t do any cleaning. I did classes, work, homework, and whatever time I had left, I was able to spend with my children.46

As Nadine’s case suggests, it is not uncommon for plural households to have one or more sister wives working outside the home to contribute to the family income. In these instances, one sister wife may be designated the “home mother” with more traditional household duties related to childrearing and housekeeping for the entire extended family.47

Marriage Customs within the Work

Women of the Work believe that their group continues the marriage practices of their ancestors, while under Rulon and Warren Jeffs, the FLDS church pursues its well-known divergent path. Even before Rulon Jeffs’s assumption of control of the church at Colorado City, an underlying cause of the split regarded women and unquestioned patriarchal authority. Hammon and Timpson encouraged women to speak openly and to utilize their talents—whether in the home or in the business world. Hammon challenged other leaders when he employed women in city government. Women are encouraged to wear their hair and to dress as they please as long as they respect the community’s rules of modesty about the human body. Nadine describes women’s role in marriage: “One of the things I think is powerful about the way we live is that all women are given the option to marry if they choose and have the rights of being a wife and mother and that the women are in charge of that process.” By comparison, Warren Jeffs uses the “Law of Placing” to assign girls to older men as wives, while also reassigning long-time wives of rivals to more loyal men.48

Although women in Centennial Park assert greater power than women in many other polygamist sects, certain aspects of their lives remain strongly patriarchal. Theology and tradition mandate that the Priesthood Council is composed of men and that only men hold the priesthood. As seen in Nadine’s home, some plural households make important decisions, including distribution of funds and career choices, by consensus among adults. However, traditional norms mandate that the family patriarch should lead the household. One student who attended SUU in the 2010s, Mark, reported that in his household with dozens of siblings and multiple mothers in one of the town’s largest houses, his father gave out allowances to the dozens of family members as he saw fit.49

Members of the Work are also traditional in their selection of a spouse, a process governed more by the Priesthood Council and spiritual guidance than modern conceptions of love and individual choice.50 Women of the Work do not date, since in their view dating can cloud their judgment, but they do have some control over the selection of a marriage partner. As Darlene states, “Although men have to prove themselves through hard work and devotion to faith, [marriage] is not driven by men. The women are the ones that are making the choice.”51 Some young women feel called to marry a single man they grew up with, a teacher at the local school, a well-respected older man with many wives, or perhaps someone they are aware of from afar. In certain cases, young women ask the Priesthood Council for recommendations of young men to marry.52 The congregations at Centennial Park and near Salt Lake City are rather small in size, and would-be spouses often turn to related communities and various independent polygamist groups for potential marriage partners.

Managing Plural Families

An additional wife joining a family is a complicated process. Families work together to create consensus about a new woman entering a household, and they establish delineated roles for each member afterward. Most women say they view it a blessing to have a sister wife join the family.53 With few exceptions, the women of CPAC extol the virtues of having sister wives and multiple mothers in one household, even pitying what some refer to as “single moms” for not having “a sister wife to help them out.”54 The women of CPAC emphasize the great joys and blessings that they feel stem from the multiple mother figures in their lives. As Darlene explains:

It was a lovely experience growing up because I saw a lot of contrast. I love and adore my other mother, and I can tell you as a teenager when you’re struggling . . . you just feel like your parents cannot even relate to where you are coming from. . . . But I was very fortunate in having a younger mother that was a little closer to my generation that loved and adored me like a mother but was able to step outside of my relationship with her as a mom and say, “Look, I know where you’re coming from, and this is some good, sound advice.” And I was able to hear it from her when my mom was not able to even articulate the same conversation because it was so personal for her, this relationship with me. . . . I was defensive. She was defensive. And I’ve seen this . . . with my peers, with my children, having someone else who loves and cares for you and supports you in that parental role, that is able to give you that kind of guidance that you need when it’s so critical and so important, to me that is a huge benefit of the way that I was raised.55

Many women of the Work acknowledge the difficulties involved as well. One of the challenges of living the principle involves a first wife accepting one or more plural wives into their household. Members of CPAC feel that women are central to this decision.56 The women also recognize the burdens placed on men and all family members living in a plural household. As Maryann says, “It’s a huge job for a man. . . . It is a huge commitment, and it takes quite a man to take care of a family that size.” Nadine adds that women have “an immense amount of leeway given to them in terms of having the rights to be a wife and mother. Part of what we believe about priesthood is that [it helps] facilitate the process for women, and for a man to reject her, I think there would have to be some real reasons.” Darlene continues, “We also look at another person coming into our family as a blessing. As challenging as it might appear or whatever might be involved, we see that as a blessing. And . . . who would want to deny a blessing?” Maryann adds, “It’s a commitment for the ladies to be able to work together. We have to establish multiple relationships within the family.”57 Unlike portrayed in media, it is not acceptable for a married man to go out and seek another wife. As Darlene argues, “How would you feel if your husband was married to you and dating another girl?” According to the women of the Work, single women initiate the process of joining an existing household. A form of interview is involved, where women have an equal voice in agreeing to a proposed union. As Janelle relates, “When my sister wife came into the family . . . I listed out all my concerns with my husband about what I would ask if someone were to come into our family, or what would I want? What are our family values? We . . . listed out everything that was really important to us, and we all sat down and talked about it and went down through everything. And when she agreed with our goals as a family, then everybody was okay, and we went for it.”58 Reaching consensus among current women in a household, potential women to join, as well as the man was a primary goal in the process.

To take into account varied personalities, the group allows flexibility in living arrangements. In some homes all spouses live under one roof, often eating cafeteria-style meals, while in others a woman can choose to live separately with her children.59 Some CPAC women openly discuss the challenges of coping with different personalities and living arrangements among family members. As Darlene relates:

Aerial view of Centennial Park. The buildings in the foreground are locally owned industrial businesses. Courtesy of CPAC.

It’s unique for everyone. I have a sister wife that struggles a lot with the lifestyle. She wasn’t raised in it, [and] . . . she was [married to our husband] a year before I was, and she, too, was a plural wife, but she chose to live by herself. . . . So we focus [on the decision as] . . . a matter of prayer. . . . Is this who I want to live eternity [with]? Is this where our Father in Heaven wants me? So when I had this conversation with her, she said “I’m not going to pretend that this is easy for me and that I’m happy about this . . . but I do recognize your commitment to your faith, my husband’s commitment to his faith, and I don’t want to be the person that stands in the way of you two being together if you’re meant to be together.” . . . I can’t help but appreciate that because it made a spot for me in his life, and as much as I want to be open and welcoming for another woman to come into our family, I too want that, regardless of my human nature and my jealousies and my weaknesses.60

As Darlene’s comments reveal, despite the benefits, living plural marriage has its challenges. Nadine sees plural marriage, like her religion’s other principles, as an opportunity to address numerous human weaknesses, including jealousy, selfishness, and envy to live more godly to prepare for life after death. Women of the Work believe in a premortal existence and that plural marriage allows more spirit children there to attain earthly bodies. Fundamentalist Mormons, referring to a passage of scripture in the LDS Doctrines and Covenants, believe that plural marriage is a requirement of salvation.61 The people of Centennial Park in fact believe that God lives and is a product of plural marriage. As Maryann relates, “I believe in a Father in Heaven who has many Mothers in Heaven. I don’t believe one Mother could have brought forth this many spirit children to populate the earth. So I believe that if I want to become like my Father in Heaven, I too should learn His way.”62

One difficult issue that parents deal with is accepting when their child decides not to follow their example of plural marriage. Although heartbroken when in 2019 two of her sons rejected plural marriage, Nadine did not end her relationship with her sons.63 Darlene relates, “I have siblings that are more comfortable living [outside the church] because they don’t have to feel the pressure of what we are choosing . . . even though we love them. They’re welcome to come and stay at my house.”64 This openness contrasts markedly with other groups like the FLDS who generally cut off all contact with family members who have left their faith.

Legal Issues

The women involved with CPAC have a firm grasp of legal issues related to polygamy. Contemplating their status has led some to embrace legal and civil rights discourses from diverse perspectives. They have also consulted an LGBTQ rights activist to learn strategies to further marriage equality, as many see their situations in similar lights.65 Asked about the prospect that her marriage might become legal, as occurred with same-sex unions after a 2015 Supreme Court decision, Nadine comments:

I have mixed feelings about it . . . because today that means that the government is meddling in my marriage. . . . Do I want the right to walk into my husband’s hospital room and have a say? I do. Would I love to be able to be put on his beneficiary for insurance? I would love that. There’s some pieces of this that I would love, but I am happy to give those pieces up just to have the freedom to not have . . . the government trying to regulate this. That’s my answer. Our goal is to get it decriminalized.66

Since the time of these oral interviews, CPAC’s larger effort that plural marriage gain more acceptance and legal sanction has borne some fruit. In February 2020, the Utah legislature approved a bill that would reduce polygamy from a felony to an infraction, akin to a traffic ticket with no jail time. CPAC had sent lobbyists to advocate for the bill. When talking about signing the law, Governor Gary Herbert noted, “With marriage laws being what they are today, and the liberalization of and more broadening of it, eliminating [polygamy] from being a felony to a lesser offense is probably warranted.” This law is certainly a cause for rejoicing in Centennial Park and a reward for their hardfought campaign, although it is not applicable to members who live in Arizona.67

Relations with the FLDS and Colorado City Community

Women in Centennial Park express an aching desire to reconnect with their estranged relatives among the FLDS. Darlene relates, “It’s really sad because the schism affected brothers and sisters, parents and children. Families were split . . . so we have a lot of family members who are part of the FLDS today that haven’t spoken to us for many, many years.” Maryann concurs: “We would all choose to maintain contact with all of our sisters if we could. I have three dozen siblings, four of us in Centennial Park and . . . most of the [rest] are in the FLDS, and I live in the same community with them, on the same street as them, two houses away from some of them, and have zero contact. . . . If they even see me on the street, they turn away and walk away.” Nadine explains: “After the split we were the apostates in many people’s minds. . . . Many people have asked us . . . why don’t they come to us for help because we are just right across the main highway. . . . It really harks back to the fact they see us as terrible human beings, as the enemy, as these apostates.”

Women of the Work still worry about these estranged family members, fearing Warren Jeffs may decree a mass suicide or other catastrophe.68 After Jeffs became prophet of the FLDS in 2002, many members were excommunicated and expelled. Because Rulon and Warren Jeffs’s followers were taught that members of the Work, even their own siblings, were evil apostates “in league with Satan,” few reached out to their neighbors for help.69 Maryann remarks, “There’s a whole section of their community now that have come out of the FLDS and they’re trying to put their lives back together . . . [They are] coming to our schools and . . . our store, and coming to our doors and saying, ‘We’re sorry for the way we’ve treated you all these years.’ . . . So there’s a lot of healing going on in the community right now.”70 In this regard, women of the Work have been active in safety net organizations. Maryann continues, “every other month we get together with all different kinds of outside agencies to try to open doorways for people to gain assistance, especially those who are coming out and don’t quite know what to do with themselves. . . . Recently Centennial Park has been called upon, for instance, to do a food drive.”71 Since 2015, major changes have taken place in Colorado City. The FLDS exodus has accelerated, with many ex-members continuing to reconnect with their estranged relatives in Centennial Park.72

CPAC and Alternative Discourses about Women in Plural Marriage

Women of the Work feel that by opening to the outside society, telling their stories, and asserting themselves as women actively living plural marriage, they can affect change and help dispel myths about polygyny. The Polygamy Summit of 2003 spurred women leaders to establish CPAC. As a group, they have since tried to inform audiences about how the Work’s form of plural marriage and their community life at Centennial Park differs from popular media portrayals of polygamy, especially from sensationalized accounts on the abuses of Warren Jeffs and the FLDS church. In comparison to other sects, the Centennial Park group represents a middle-ground approach to polygamy in modern America. They embody an alternative between groups like the FLDS who attempt almost complete isolation from the dominant society to others who are highly integrated into modern urban life. Through their outreach with CPAC, these women have helped establish their own narrative and create their own discourse about plural marriage. They have departed from the public silence of their mothers and grandmothers to tell their own truths despite potential negative consequences. Learning from other groups who utilized human rights discourses to change marriage laws in the United States, women of the Work believe that only by telling their stories and asserting their rights can they find a measure of acceptance and, ultimately, marriage equality in modern America.

Notes

1. Nadine, interviews by author, March 28–30, 2020. For more on the value of an ethnographic approach utilizing oral interviews and observation informed by scholarly knowledge in conveying the voices of marginalized peoples and cultures, see Donal Carbaugh, “Cultural Discourse Analysis: Communication Practices and Intercultural Encounters,” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 36, no. 3 (2007): 167–82. Because of the current illegal nature of polygamy and/ or bigamy, at the request of CPAC leaders when quoting individuals, I will use pseudonyms and only first names in this article. Quotations are drawn from several sources. I hosted two student-oriented discussions, each approximately two hours long, on the campus of Southern Utah University with CPAC on November 17, 2014, and April 16, 2015. They were recorded with the permission of the participants. Special Collections at Southern Utah University made transcripts of these discussions, totaling thirty-eight, single-spaced pages in length. I also spoke with thirteen individuals from Centennial Park between 2008 and 2015. All interviews cited were conducted by the author. The author also visited the community on several occasions to conduct personal observations and field work. Transcripts are located at Special Collections, Sherratt Library, Southern Utah University, Cedar City, Utah (hereafter SUU).

2. Opening comments, CPAC panel, transcripts, SUU.

3. Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff organized the summit to aid individuals wanting to leave what his office viewed as abusive polygamous lifestyles. The meeting included representatives from Washington County, Utah, and officials from Arizona, including the Mohave County Supervisor (where Colorado City and Centennial Park are located), local Arizona law enforcement, and an Arizona state senator representing the district. Though not officially invited, fifty-five women in plural households and their teenage daughters attended. Nancy Perkins, “Polygamous Wives Defend Their Lifestyle,” Deseret News, August 23, 2003, accessed July 20, 2020, deseret.com/2003/8/23/19743593/polygamous -wives-defend-their-lifestyle.

4. Maryann, transcripts.

5. Nadine, transcripts.

6. See D. Michael Quinn, “LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890–1904,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 18 (Spring 1985): 9–105.

7. Jessie L. Embry, Mormon Polygamous Families: Life in the Principle (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1987), 9–13; Jacob Marinus Lauritzen, Hidden Flowers: The Life, Letters, and Poetry of Jacob Marinus Lauritzen (Brigham City, UT: Bradbury Printers, 1982), 102–4; Brian C. Hales, Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism: The Generations after the Manifesto (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2006), 221, 266, 341, 283; Colorado City General Plan, March 15, 1993, Hayden Library, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona.

8. General Plan, March 15, 1993, and Town of Colorado City General Plan, October 15, 2002, Hayden Library, ASU; Hales, Modern Polygamy, 353; Nephi, interviews; Heber B. Hammon and William Jankowiak, “One Vision: The Making, Unmaking, and Remaking of a Fundamentalist Community,” in Modern Polygamy in the United States: Historical, Cultural, and Legal Issues, ed. Cardell Jacobson and Lara Burton (London: Oxford University Press, 2011), 51–59; Catherine, interview; Benjamin Bistline, The Polygamists (Scottsdale, AZ: Agreka LLC Publishers, 2004), 21–26, 34–35, 48, 55–56, 69–70.

9. Marianne T. Watson, “Short Creek: ‘A Refuge for the Saints,’” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 36 (Spring 2003): 75–86; Bistline, Polygamists, 18; Hales, Modern Polygamy, 248, 273; Ken Driggs, “Imprisonment, Defiance, and Division: A History of Mormon Fundamentalism in the 1940s and 1950s,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 38 (Spring 2005): 65–78.

10. Wiley S. Maloney, “Short Creek Story,” American West (March 1954). For a thorough account of the raids, see Martha Sonntag Bradley, Kidnapped From That Land: The Government Raids on Short Creek Polygamists (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1993).

11. Governor Howard Pyle, Radio Address, transcript, Short Creek File, Polly Rosenbaum Archives, Arizona State Archives, Phoenix, Arizona; “Short Creek Becomes Ghost Town,” Arizona Republic, June 27, 1954.

12. Maryann, transcripts.

13. Nadine, interviews.

14. Maryann, transcripts. Part of the Maryann quote is from Michael K. Ault, “Straight is the Gate: An Ethnographic Study of the Centennial Park Polygamist Community” (master’s thesis, Southern Utah University, May 2012).

15. Martha S. Bradley, “The Women of Fundamentalism: Short Creek, 1953,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 23 (Summer 1990): 15–18; Ken Driggs, “Twentieth Century Polygamy and Fundamentalist Mormons in Southern Utah,” Juanita Brooks Lecture, Dixie College, 1990; Maryann, transcripts.

16. Nadine, transcripts.

17. “Address Given by Senator Jim Smith on the Floor of the Senate,” March 31, 1954, and December 30, 1953, Short Creek File, Arizona State Archives; Maryann, transcripts; Catherine, interview; Ault, “Straight is the Gate,” 19.

18. In the Supreme Court of the State of Arizona, County of Maricopa, Clyde Mackert et al. vs. Arizona State Board of Education, July 24, 1954, Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County, Records of Clerk, Phoenix; Richard S. Jessop to Board of Education of Arizona, May 12, 1954, box 8, fd. Short Creek Material, Public Instruction/M.L. Brooks, Supt. Series 1951–1954, Arizona State Archives; “Short Creek School Closed amid Strip Controversy,” Mohave County Miner, May 9, 1957; Nadine, transcripts.

19. General Plan, October 15, 2002; “New Road Planned for Arizona Strip: Short Creek,” Arizona Republic, April 9, 1961.

20. Nadine, transcripts; Hales, Modern Polygamy, 290, 320; General Plan, March 15, 1993.

21. Nephi, interviews; Catherine, interviews; Hammon and Jankowiak, “One Vision,” 44–46; Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 184.

22. Nadine, transcripts; Alva, interview; Hammon and Jankowiak, “One Vision,” 56–65.

23. Nadine, transcripts; Nadine, interviews.

24. Nadine, interviews; Nadine and Darlene, transcripts; Hammon and Jankowiak, “One Vision,” 61–66.

25. General Plan, October 15, 2002; Hales, Modern Polygamy, 271, 321.

26. Darlene and Nadine, transcripts; Hammon and Jankowiak, “One Vision,” 61–66.

27. Nadine, interviews; Nephi and Alva interviews; sermon heard by author, 2015.

28. Information on the town founding and land tenure from sermon heard by author and interviews of Nephi and Alva, spring 2015. Information on shunning from Nadine, interviews.

29. N. Timpson interviews; Ault, “Straight is the Gate,” 22; General Plan, October 15, 2002.

30. Mohave County, Arizona, Assessors Office, map, accessed April 2, 2020, www.mohavecountyus; General Plan, October 15, 2002; Darlene and Maryann, transcripts.

31. Maryann, transcripts.

32. Observation of author, 2015.

33. D. Michael Quinn, “Plural Marriages After the 1890 Manifesto,” speech, August 11, 1991, accessed April 2, 2020, www.salamandersociety.com; Hales, Modern Polygamy, 37–43, 145–57; Nadine, interviews.

34. Alva, interviews; Hales, Modern Polygamy, 37, 90, 145–49; Quinn, “Plural Marriage”; Driggs, “Twentieth Century Polygamy.”

35. Nadine, transcripts.

36. Nadine, transcripts.

37. Nadine, transcripts. For analyses of post-1890 plural marriages, see Quinn, “Plural Marriage”; Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 171–84; Hales, Modern Polygamy, 7, 66–68, 96–97, 156–60, 193, 202. For fundamentalists’ beliefs about authority, see “Affidavit of Rulon T. Jeffs,” September 15, 1987, Complaint of Samuel S. Barlow v. John A. Blackburn, et al., March 10, 1988, Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County, Records of Clerk, Phoenix; Joseph White Musser, Journal of Joseph White Musser (1872–1954) (n.p., n.d.) in Americana Collection, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah (hereafter HBLL).

38. Nadine, interviews.

39. Sermon heard by author, March 2015; Mohave County, Arizona, Assessors Office, www.mohavecountyus; Alva and Nephi, interviews; Karl F. Brooks and Douglas D. Alder, “The New Polygamy,” in History of Washington County: From Isolation to Destination (Salt Lake City: Utah State Historical Society and Washington County Commission, 1996).

40. Hammon and Jankowiak, “One Vision,” 59; Nate Carlisle, “Polygamous Towns Gradually Becoming Conventional,” Salt Lake Tribune, August 1, 2016; Nephi, interviews.

41. Darlene, transcripts; Nadine, interviews.

42. Maryann, transcripts.

43. Nadine, interviews; Alva, interviews; Maryann, interviews.

44. Nadine, interviews.

45. Merilee, interview; Mathew, interview; Nephi, interviews; Maryann, transcripts; Masada Charter School, accessed September 10, 2018, www.masadaschool.org; Janelle, transcripts.

46. Nadine, transcripts. 4

7. Catherine, interviews; observations of author, 2015; Nadine, interviews.

48. Nadine, transcripts; Julene, interview; Stella, interview; Catherine, interview; Hammon and Jankowiak, “One Vision,” 58; Hales, Modern Polygamy, 320.

49. Correspondence between Mark and David Lunt, spring 2015.

50. Testimony of CPAC panel, 2015; Bradley, “The Women of Fundamentalism,” 18–19; Hales, Modern Polygamy, 321; Kathryn M. Danes, “Defining Polygamous Patterns,” in Modern Polygamy in the United States, 129–30.

51. Nephi, interviews; Jenny, interview; Darlene, transcripts.

52. Nadine, interviews.

53. Statements of CPAC, transcripts. For an analysis of women’s roles in modern plural marriage, see Janet Bennion, Evaluating the Effects of Polygamy on Women and Children in Four North American Fundamentalist Groups (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2008) and Carrie A. Miles, “What’s Love Got to Do with It?” Earthly Experience of Celestial Marriage, Past and Present,” in Modern Polygamy in the United States, 189–201.

54. Maryann, transcripts.

55. Darlene, transcripts.

56. Maryann, transcripts; Nephi, interviews; Ault, “Straight is the Gate,” 33.

57. Maryann, Nadine, and Darlene, transcripts.

58. Janelle and Darlene, transcripts.

59. Jenny, interview; Julene, interview; Stella, interview; observations of author, 2015.

60. Darlene, transcripts.

61. Nadine, interviews; Catherine, interview; Bradley, “The Women of Fundamentalism,” 25–26; Embry, Mormon Polygamous Families, 6, 187–88; Doctrines and Covenants 132:4; Joseph Musser, Journal, unprocessed (2015), Special Collections, HBLL. Currently, the FLDS take a harder stance, arguing a person is damned if he does not take additional wives. Affidavit of Rulon T. Jeffs, September 15, 1987, Complaint of Samuel S. Barlow v. John A. Blackburn, et al., March 10, 1988, Superior Court of Arizona, Maricopa County, Records of Clerk, Phoenix.

62. Maryann, transcripts.

63. Nadine, transcripts.

64. Darlene, transcripts.

65. Ault, “Straight is the Gate,” 58.

66. Obergefell v. Hodges, 135 S. Ct. 2584 (2015), accessed July 20, 2020, lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p /casebrief-obergefell-v-hodges; Nadine, transcripts.

67. Nadine, interviews; Nate Carlisle, “Utah Legislature Votes to Decriminalize Polygamy,” Salt Lake Tribune, February 28, 2020.

68. Nadine, interviews; Darlene, Maryann, Nadine, transcripts; Catherine and Alva, interviews.

69. Alva, interviews; Nadine, interviews.

70. Maryann, transcripts.

71. Nephi and Catherine, interviews; observations of author, 2015; Maryann, transcripts.

72. Nadine, interviews.