Mancos is on the map - the wrong one
 
By Tom Vaughan
Mancos Times Editor
 
Mancos is in the news more and more often lately, but it's a notoriety many residents could do without.

On May 1, the Intelligence Project of the Southern Poverty Law Center released its latest map of "Active U.S. Hate Groups in 2004" (www.splcenter.org/intel/map/hate.jsp). There, in the southwest corner of the Colorado map, is a pin marking the location of Mancos.

The reason Mancos made the hate map is because the SPLC has designated the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints a hate group, based on derogatory remarks about African-Americans in tape-recorded speeches by FLDS prophet Warren Jeffs. And, in July 2003, David Allred, an FLDS member and son-in-law of Jeffs, bought 60 acres off CR 39 in the north end of the Mancos Valley. Last fall, Allred bought another 60 acres nearby. So, all of the outposts of the Jeffs faction of the FLDS have been identified as hate group sites on the map - Eldorado, Texas; Hildale, Utah; Colorado City, Ariz., and Mancos.

Though there was a flurry of round-the-clock building activity for several months after Allred purchased the first 60-acre parcel, expanding the residential capacity of the place from three bedrooms and two baths to 10 bedrooms and 10 baths, for at least six months there has been little indication that there is anyone but a caretaker living there.

Nonetheless, Denver's KUSA television station dispatched reporter Andrew Resnik and photographer Corky Scholl to Mancos and then to Short Creek (the traditional name for the twin towns of Colorado City and Hildale) to do a special report. The 9News report aired Thursday and Friday last week; the print version is titled, "Polygamists under pressure, establish new colony in Colorado" (this can be read at www.9news.com).

When the Channel 9 crew visited the FLDS properties on April 13, there was no one from the FLDS to interview. Deputy County Assessor Scott Davis joined them at the site and described how he had learned the nature of the group when he visited the property in 2004 to assess the improvements.

The only other locals in the 9News story are Kristi Borchers and Tammy Archuleta, each of whom appeared on screen long enough to say one sentence.

What viewers did see as they watched the Channel 9 report was many shots of young blonde mothers and many little blonde children - who live in Short Creek. Resnik and Scholl went there after they finished filming in Mancos, and it's residents of Short Creek that viewers saw as the story opened and in later scenes.

Much of the report relates the story of the origins of the polygamous sect in Short Creek, as well as interviews with women who have left the group. The women describe the authoritarian and secretive nature of the sect, marriages to close relatives, under-age marriages of girls, welfare abuse and alleged instances of sexual assault.

Channel 9's closing assessment of the Colorado "colony" is: "Nobody [in Mancos] is exactly sure why the polygamists have picked Mancos. And they do not expect their new neighbors to explain themselves."
 
cortezjournal.com
Originally published May 10, 2005
 
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