| No big love for the curious here | |
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By Jayne Clark Travel » Destinations USA TODAY | |
HILDALE, Utah — It isn't lovely, cultural or particularly welcoming. Nor will you find mention of this colorless town in mainstream travel guides. But a growing number of motorists making the trek down Route 59 south of Zion National Park's red-rock bounty are pausing for a look-see, thanks to media exposure surrounding a polygamous sect headquartered here. Hildale and its sister town of Colorado City, just over the Arizona border, are headquarters of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and home since the 1930s to a large polygamous enclave. The sect bears more than a passing resemblance to the one portrayed in Big Love, the HBO series that chronicles a polygamous Utah family. Add to that the legal woes of the church's leader and former FBI 10 Most Wanted poster boy Warren Jeffs, and it's enough to make an already reclusive community want to lock the door and turn out the lights. Charged with being an accomplice to rape for performing the spiritual marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old cousin, Jeffs is now awaiting trial, a proceeding sure to brighten the spotlight on these communities. So is the start of the second season on June 17 of the critically acclaimed Big Love. After the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints banned polygamy in 1890, some practitioners broke away to form their own congregations and communities. Venturing through the Mormon pioneer towns of southwestern Utah, site of some of the nation's most dramatic landscapes, one can see tongue-in-cheek references to the plural-marriage lifestyle. A cafe in Springdale serves Polygamy Porter. (The beer's slogan: Bring a six-pack home for the wives.) There are the Second Wife's House, a historic dwelling on Ephraim's Main Street, and the Seven Wives Inn in St. George. It's a cheekiness rarely exhibited in Hildale/Colorado City, combined population about 6,000. No Trespassing, Keep Out and Private Property signs mark the block-and-steel fences that shield individual housing compounds. Some of the homes are elaborate, if architecturally haphazard. Multiple additions, often built using a hodgepodge of materials, accommodate new wives and progeny. Despite the operatic red sandstone backdrop of this juniper-studded, high desert plateau, the towns exhibit a hardscrabble, trapped-in-another-era feel. Yards are not landscaped. Exteriors are unpainted. Roads are uneven. Commerce is utilitarian: a vacuum repair shop, fabric store, grocery. Church members, who are the most conservative of the residents, are recognizable by their appearance: long-haired women in floor-length dresses; clean-shaven men in plaid shirts and jeans. Conviviality, at least with outsiders, appears rare. You walk into the Mark Twain Inn to check out the "fine dining" promised on the sign outside and find the motel/restaurant closed a year or two ago; no one had bothered to remove the towering red MOTEL sign out front. (It has since been taken down.) The building houses commercial offices. An angry boss doesn't appreciate you chatting with an employee and tells you to leave. So you wander across the street to the pharmacy and casually ask the white-coated pharmacist whether Big Love's success has drawn more visitors. "No comment," he snaps, opening the door to hasten your exit. You drop by the town office, but the mayor isn't in. And when you call to ask about the current state of tourism, Mayor David Zitting acknowledges that curiosity has ratcheted up visits to a town that isn't used to getting much company. Frankly, he says, it's a nuisance. Just when you're thinking outsiders truly are not wanted here, you drop by a gas-and-go emporium called the Border Store and discover a little oasis of friendliness right there on the highway. Clerk Martha Hammon confirms that, yes, there does seem to be more traffic going through these days. It's the Big Love factor, "plus all the publicity about Warren Jeffs." Then you notice the adjoining restaurant, The Merry Wives Cafe, its very name a sign that somebody around here has a sense of humor. It's a cheerful spot decorated with colorful pottery and historic black-and-white photos of large, polygamous families. Assistant store manager Tyler Steed, 19, pulls up a chair and confirms that the television series and Jeffs' legal troubles have sparked an increase in traffic. Some people are curious about the lifestyle. A few are hostile. But most "are just people who are bored on their way to the Grand Canyon." The show "has brought more attention, and we're trying to figure out if that's a good or a bad thing," says Steed, a member of a polygamous family from the more progressive nearby Centennial Park community. "Maybe the more (visitors) we get, the more they'll understand we're just regular people living our lives and not some crazy cult." The name for the new Merry Wives Cafe, by the way, was the result of a contest that invited community members to nominate possible monikers. Among the losing suggestions: The Big Love Cafe. "They'd (HBO) probably sue us," Steed quips. "And the last thing we need is more legal action." | |
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USAToday.com Originally published April 5, 2007 | |
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