The main entry to the property is a dirt easement blocked by a locked metal gate. A quarter-mile down the path there's a small guard shack, and someone equipped with binoculars has been spotted atop a construction tower that has a bird's-eye view of the 1,691-acre tract.

The Rev. Joseph Vathalloor, whose small Roman Catholic church is at the intersection of the road leading to the FLDS site, said he and other clergy in town have talked about trying to say hello to Jeffs.

"But what I'm told is he's not seeing anyone," Vathalloor said.

The number of church members in Eldorado is unknown, and while they've been seen only sporadically, they're easily spotted in the town of just under 2,000.

Men and boys wear buttoned-up long-sleeve shirts. Women and girls wear long, loose-fitting pastel-colored dresses and have long braided hair.

"They don't say much," said Tammy McGinnis, 28, who works at a Shell convenience store not far from the compound where some church men have purchased gasoline. "I said hello to one. He just looked down."

In Texas, where bigamy is a misdemeanor, church men get around the law by declaring only one legal wife. The others are known as "celestial" wives, said Jimmy Doyle, the county's justice of the peace.

Griffin, the county judge, is torn between what is viewed by many as a threat to his county and his respect for the rights of privacy and religious freedom. And Doyle said he can't see any criminal charges "until one of the girls comes into my office and raises her hand and swears they've been molested by so and so, and that's never going to happen."