The air changed as I crossed into the Arizona Strip. When I rented the car in Phoenix at 11:30 last night, the temperature was over ninety. It was hot as I drove up from Phoenix this morning, and pleasant as I crossed the mountains near Flagstaff this afternoon. But as I crossed Marble Canyon and neared the shadows of the Vermillion Cliffs, there was a chill in the air.
The Arizona Strip is a desolate stretch of high-elevation scrubland north of the Grand Canyon. The Nevada and Utah state lines mark its western and northern boundaries, and the deep channel carved by the Colorado River bounds it to the south and east. It is hot during the summer days and bitterly cold during the winter nights. Few trees grow here. Except the cottonwoods that grow alongside the region’s rare watercourses, the vegetation in the flatlands rarely reaches four feet high. The saguaro cactus, which towers high over the floor of the Sonoran Desert, doesn’t range this far north. The sand of the Arizona Strip is instead covered by gnarled and hardy sagebrush and occasional clumps of drought-resistant grass, with wide stretches of red sand in between. The region’s dominant feature is rock.
I crossed into the Arizona Strip on US-89A by crossing Marble Canyon, an impressive ditch that the Colorado River excavated before digging the Grand Canyon several miles downstream. After entering the Strip, US-89A turns west and tracks the southeastern edge of the Vermillion Cliffs, high, sheer faces of red rock that darken as the sun retreats behind them. It was late in the afternoon, and rain clouds were blowing in from the west. I followed the road with the top down in my rented convertible. The sun sulked behind thickening clouds and sank near the tops of the cliffs. I could see the rain blowing in. I stopped to raise the top and turn on the heater.
The Arizona Strip is not beautiful like Arches National Park, and it is not hospitable like some of Arizona’s lower areas where the wind does not rake the sand. Its soil is not fertile and there are few good points of access to the Colorado River. Small wonder, then, that the area is sparsely populated. Many of those who have moved to the Arizona Strip have done so to avoid people.
The area’s most well-known immigrants, and those who settled the Strip’s most populous town, came to practice polygamy. They were members of the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints, and they followed Rulon Jeffs, whom they considered a prophet. They founded Colorado City, where, under Rulon Jeff’s absolute control, they practiced polygamy, forbade drinking, dancing, or listening to radio, and routinely observed marriages of girls younger than sixteen to older men with other wives. Noncompliant members of the community were expelled. Jeffs controlled the police, the courts and the mayor. After Rulon Jeffs died, his son, Warren, took absolute control. But in recent years, the authorities grew less willing to tolerate the illegal conduct in Colorado City. They came after Warren Jeffs. He went on the run. The FBI put him on their top-ten most wanted list for polygamy and various sex crimes. In late 2007, he was convicted of several offenses and incarcerated.
The wind is ruffling the sides of my tent, and the hard ground is cold beneath my elbows as I lie here typing. The chill is starting to stiffen my fingers. I do not know what has happened to the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-Day Saints since Warren Jeffs was imprisoned, and I do not know what Colorado City looks like now. Tomorrow I will try to find out.
Suggested reading:
John Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith (2005)
http://www.slate.com/toolbar.aspx?action=read&id=2189275
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4629320
http://www.slate.com/id/2189274/pagenum/2
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