Utah polygamist sect buys Colorado 'hideaway'

Associated Press/October 24, 2004

Salt Lake City -- An agent for a polygamist sect in Utah bought a 60 acres of land in Colorado, another possible hideaway for the fundementalist church.

The same man, David Allred, bought a 16-hundred-acre west Texas ranch last November for a supposed hunting retreat.

But later, leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints church acknowledged to Texas authorities that ranch was intended as refuge from pressure on the church from attorneys general in Utah and Arizona.

The sect is based in the border towns of Hildale, Utah and Colorado City, Arizona.

About the same time as the Texas purchase, Allred bought the 60 acres of land in Colorado midway between Cortez and Durango.

It came to the attention of local authorities when a tax assessor trying to measure the property was turned away.