Duckwall's Not Connected with Allco Company of Hildale, Utah
 
The Eldorado Success
 
Duckwall's/Alco officials announced this week that their company is not affiliated with any Allco businesses, located in Hildale, UT and Colorado City, AZ.

Duckwall's Variety Stores, including the one located here in Eldorado, and Alco Discount Stores, including the one in Sonora, are owned by Duckwall Alco Stores, Inc., a Kansas based corporation, named after its founder A.L. Duckwall. Shares in the company are publicly traded on the NASDAQ stock exchange.

Confusion about the company's ownership apparently resulted from a news article that appeared in the Salt Lake City Tribune, and on its website. The story, picked up by a number of other publications, linked David Allred, the Utah man who organized YFZ Land L.L.C., and bought 1,691 acres north of Eldorado, to an Alco Company in the twin cities.

Flora Jessop, a child's rights activist from Phoenix, AZ, captured national media attention last month when she alleged that David Allred and the YFZ Ranch are affiliated with the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints Church (FLDS) located primarily in Hildale, UT and Colorado City, AZ.

Jessop further claimed that members of the FLDS, a splinter sect of the Mormon Church, continues to practice polygamy, plural marriages, and that underage girls in the church are forced to marry older men. She reinforced her claims by saying that she had grown up in the church and had been forced into marriage at age 16. She later fled the group and the twin towns of Colorado City and Hildale.

Dawn Fay, manager of the local Duckwall's variety store, told the Success this week that a recent spate of rumors that her store is connected with the FLDS has led to a dramatic downturn in business.

Jim Schoenbeck, Senior Vice President of Store Operations for Duckwall Alco told the Success, "Our company is in no way connected to Allco companies in Hildale, Utah or Colorado City, Arizona."

"We are based in Abilene, Kansas, the town where our founder, A.L. Duckwall, opened his first store," Schoenbeck explained.

More information about Duckwall Alco, Inc. and its history is available on the company's Internet website at www.duckwall.com.
 
MyEldorado.net
Originally published April 22, 2004
 
Back