HILDALE, Utah — The Short Creek communities of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona are closer to Zion National Park than I knew. The Smithsonian Butte Scenic Back Country Byway begins just outside of Zion and ends in the town of Apple Valley, just up the road from the border towns.
It's an area I've never explored, though my colleagues Ben Winslow and Nate Carlisle have covered the polygamous communities expertly for years. My dog Chaco and I stayed in an inexpensive bunkhouse at Gooseberry Lodges in Apple Valley. I could pass up a room for 40 bucks and passed up the fancy bunkhouses that had their own bathrooms to claim the deal. (There were nice bathrooms and showers next door.)
Hildale and Colorado City sit in the shadow of red rock buttes. It's a setting equal to other popular tourist towns in Utah, but the difference is evident as you drive along Highway 59.
Think about small towns in rural Utah. Drive through Moab, Torrey, or Bluff, or even larger cities that don't have interstates like Logan and Vernal. They make sure the highway runs through town. It's their main street. It's because they want visitors and their dollars.
But it was a reclusive religious sect that built Hildale and Colorado City adjacent to Highway 59. The route connects the two most popular national parks in the western United States: the Grand Canyon and Zion.
Turning into Colorado City, it's not obvious where the businesses are, though the place is clearly changing. There's new construction around every corner. Modern apartments sit next to sprawling homes and cinderblock walls built for the polygamous families of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or the FLDS.
As Chaco and I meandered looking for the town square, I thought about my colleagues' reporting on the "lost boys" — actually young men, effectively exiled because the math of polygamy meant many would never find a partner.
I thought about our reporting on the young women, forced to marry in their early to mid teens.
The FLDS Church's influence waned as the man they called prophet, Warren Jeffs, was convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl. That was in 2011.
I found the town center and saw that it's now home to a brewery and a bar. I got lunch at the town square eatery, and I lucked out because I ran into Kristen Reece, who volunteered to share a story that embodies the community's transition.
"I was born right over that way," she told me, pointing across the street. These communities don't have a hospital and home births are common.
The 23-year-old told me she was born into the FLDS Church, which she said was not such a big presence in town anymore.
"My mom had spent a few years, I guess, wanting to leave, and she left. After she left, my dad also left because he wanted to go find her. He wanted to be like a family again, but the church considered us stolen," she said, referring to a more communal and proprietary understanding of parenting children in the faith.
Reece's memories reveal a world of courage and love in the face of trauma and loss, with her parents suffering through the overwhelming transition from a sheltered existence to the broader world. Adapting to the change isn't easy for adults or children, she said, but she benefited from adjusting as a child.
"I also just try to be a more joyful person in general," she told me, "I think it would be hard to be angry."
When I told her I think I would probably be really angry in her shoes, she responded: "It would be easy in the moment for sure, but it wouldn't be easy in the long run. You're just living your life and then you're kind of giving it back to the people who took from you instead of just living your life and letting that be gone and in the past."
"A lot of people who leave when they're adults really struggle mentally overcoming things," Reece added. "They still hold a lot of things deep down. I think because I was younger, and I've also had years of therapy, I think it's kind of helped me not really hold on to any of that."
Talk about getting a life lesson from someone less than half my age. I left the restaurant humbled.
And I got to my truck feeling guilty. Chaco had been waiting patiently. So I took him to the park to play fetch and to see a place I couldn't forget despite the fact I had never visited.
At Cottonwood Park in September 2015, a flash flood swept away a van with three women and 10 children inside. The FLDS families were just spending a day in the park.
A reporter's memories can be a map of sad events. After years, so many street corners and neighborhoods remind you of crimes, fires, and other tumultuous events. When it happens close to home, the sadness is overlaid by positive experiences in the same locations. I wanted to add my own positive experience in Cottonwood Park.
It turned out to be pretty easy, because this community built an amazing park, with a little train, several playgrounds, an amphitheater, basketball and volleyball courts, and the biggest slide I've ever seen in a public park.
I think the park testifies to the humanity of people who can be easy to caricature. It's a place you only build because you want your children, your neighbors, and your neighbors' children to have fun.
