Town Scraps Its Polygamy Raid Memorial
 
The Associated Press
 
COLORADO CITY, Ariz. -- Less than a month after its dedication, a stone monument commemorating the 50th anniversary of a police raid on this polygamous community is gone, and a related museum was closed.

Mayor Dan Barlow, who was 21 at the time of the 1953 raid and was arrested along with dozens of other men, said little about why the city took down the monument and closed the museum in August.

"It's gone. We just talked it over and came to the conclusion that we should back off, let things settle down," Barlow said Wednesday. "There's just too much publicity right now."

The monument dedication and opening of the old Short Creek Schoolhouse Museum and Heritage Park -- renovated with volunteer help and restored with $20,000 in grant money -- were celebrated July 26 by several hundred residents of Colorado City and nearby Hildale, Utah.

Children and parents walked through the small building to see donated artifacts along with news stories and photos of the raid meant to crack down on polygamy. The raid became a public-relations disaster when film of crying children being taken from their mothers made the news.

"We closed the museum and gave those things back to the people," Barlow said. "Someday they'll be on display again. We'll use that building for something else."

Most of the residents of the towns on the Utah-Arizona border are members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Church members believe plural marriage is essential to their salvation.

The congregations are not part of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which abandoned polygamy a century ago and now excommunicates those who advocate it. The Utah Constitution also bans polygamy.

Last month, a former area police officer was convicted on felony charges of bigamy and unlawful sexual conduct with a minor. Other news stories drawing attention to the region have focused on allegations of welfare fraud by polygamist families and the state attorney general's recent polygamy summit.
 
The Associated Press
Originally published September 4, 2003
 
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