FLDS

While most of the focus on the FLDS recently has been on the legal steps unfolding in the area of the YFZ compound near Eldorado, Texas, plus occasional news about some members of the polygamist group settled near Westcliffe, Colorado, over on the Eastern Slope, the folks here in Mancos continue to farm quietly at their off-the-grid location north of Mancos. 

The upper property continues to be inactive, though when we went by there last night we did see a fellow on an ATV with a trailer doing a boundary circuit out in the field. That's the first and only time I've ever seen a human being inside that fenced property in several years of watching it. 

At the lower property, where all the development has been, there were sounds of activity in the housing area under the trees, but nobody in sight. The two riding horses that have appeared for three summers now seem to be gone again. A pile of timbers near the upper garden area looks the same as in the past; they may be raised-bed garden supplies rather than building materials.

The big garden prepared at the south end of the big field between the road and the woods appears to have been planted to potatoes or beans or some other low, bushy row crop that can be tended with the tractor visible in the edge of the trees beyond the garden. 

We didn't walk back to the other side of the property, which can be seen through the trees from state and federal lands, but the overall appearance is that those living there are slowly developing the subsistence production of the lower property ... there are four garden areas there now, and the new one this year, pictured and just described, is pretty extensive. 

Don't know who's there, or how many, but from the prolonged presence earlier of a BMW SUV registered to a wife of David Allred, who bought the property for his father-in-law Warren Jeffs, my guess is that it's a nice, safe, quiet location for one of David's families. As I recall, there's now about 14 or 16 bedrooms on the lower property, so there could be more ... except for one glimpse in a photo published by the Cortez Journal this spring (at the time of the Texas raid on the YFZ compound), women or children have never been reported seen or heard at this location, yet the gardens are substantial evidence of their presence. 

My guess is still that these two 60-acre tracts in the Mancos Valley, along with the YFZ development in Texas, the compound in the Black Hills and perhaps other properties owned by shell corporations created by Jeffs, et al., will be important mainly as assets Jeffs tried to secretly develop outside the UEP, the trust in Short Creek and Bountiful that was supposed to be for the benefit of all FLDS members. After Jeffs dropped his defense in three civil suits against him in state and federal courts in Utah, the trust became liable for the compensation that would be awarded to the plaintiffs. That would break the trust, to the disadvantage of the other members. Meanwhile, Jeffs was squirreling away tithes and other levies in these properties, outside the reach of the UEP and the courts. Time will tell. tv