To early settlers in Grand Junction, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Utah was something to be feared.

In 1884, three years after settlers arrived here, the Grand Junction News reported that “steps are being taken … to bring into this valley a large colony of Mormons.” Such a colony would introduce polygamy and “subserviency to the Priesthood at Salt Lake,” the paper warned.

Two months later, the News vowed to use “every power that this paper possesses, every influence it can command” to fight the establishment of an LDS colony in the county.

That attitude wasn’t unusual in Colorado or around the country in the 1880s. But in Grand Junction, it soon began to change.

By 1888, when a colony of LDS members was settling near De Beque, the event merited only a one-paragraph

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