Welcome to Polygamy City, Arizona

Mormon polygamy always makes a good story. Just now the media is fascinated by the eviction of a notorious ranch in the Texan scrublands, occupied by a branch of the Fundamentalist Church of the Latter Day Saints: i.e. Mormon polygamists.

My interest in this is personal, as I am one of the few ousiders to have visited the "capital" of the Fundamentalist Mormons, Colorado City.

The first I ever heard of the place was when I was camping in the Utah saltpans. My guide was a likeable fellow who did charity work with abused and abandoned kids. He told me many of these children came from an eerie town on the Utah/Arizona border: Colorado City.

He added a compelling detail: he said the men of Colorado City had built huge homes to house their

multiple wives and enormous families. And many of these homes had no windows. This was to stop people seeing just how many wives were sleeping in the different bedrooms. And maybe how young the women were. And how often they were cousins.

My guide explained that there were no lawmen for hundreds of miles: so the Colorado City polygamists went largely undisturbed. And when the cops did come snooping, the crafty patriarchs put their wives in trailers, and wheeled them across the stateline, out of police jurisdiction.

Of course I had to go and see if this was true. But my guide warned me off the idea. He said Colorado City was absurdly hard to reach, and when I got there, I'd find the locals heavily armed - and not averse to shooting voyeurs. But I was with my brother, and I was