United States | Theocracy in America

Short Creek starts to move beyond its past as a fundamentalist fief

A small community straddling the Utah-Arizona border charts a new course

|COLORADO CITY, ARIZONA AND HILDALE CITY, UTAH

JUDGING BY its shops, Short Creek seems more like a trendy suburb of somewhere like Portland than a small town on the Utah-Arizona border with just shy of 8,000 people. There are two health-food stores, a bakery and a vape shop. The occasional sight of women in prairie dresses and the huge houses with thick walls are the only conspicuous evidence Short Creek was once home to an American theocracy.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline “Theocracy in America”

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