Provo's first mayor narrowly escaped a famous massacre on property he owned.

Another of the city's early mayors hid from polygamy raids in a secret room under the floor of his closet, where a rug covered the trap door to the hideout.

These and other stories prove that the histrionics on display in this fall's mayoral race — which finally ends with today's election — are certainly not the first and probably not even the best dramas to have played out in a city LDS Church President Brigham Young once put on par with hell.

Brigham Young summoned Abraham O. Smoot in early 1868 and told him to pack his bags, according to a Smoot family history titled "Abraham Owen Smoot: A testament of His Life" housed in the Special Collections section at the Provo City Library. Smoot would be leaving Salt Lake City, where he'd recently completed a decade as that city's second mayor.

"There are three places, all on a par, one is as good as the other," Brigham Young told Smoot, according to the account in the book. "They are Provo, hell or Texas. You can take your choice."

Smoot protested strongly about the call to move south and clean up a Provo that President Young believed was putting the Wild in Wild, Wild West.

"I'd rather go to hell than to Provo," Smoot said.

Of course, Smoot agreed to go. President Young doubled as governor of the Territory of Deseret, and he made sure Smoot had similarly broad authority. Young nominated Smoot to be Provo's eighth mayor, then named him the LDS bishop of the city and Utah (County) Stake president.

Smoot was Provo's mayor for a record 13 years (1868-1881), back when mayoral terms lasted two years. The city didn't switch to four-year terms until 1962. Verl Dixon won the 1961 election and served three terms. No mayor since has won three four-year terms, though Mayor Lewis Billings would match that feat today with a victory over challenger Dave Bailey.

Smoot had six wives and approximately 25 children. The wives were the reason for the trap door under the rug in his home at 192 S. 100 East.

Smoot saw plenty of gunfire during his days as a Mormon pioneer, but it was Provo's first mayor, Ellis Eames, who had a close brush with death at the Haun's Mill Massacre in Missouri in 1838.

Eames was co-owner of the mill, according to family history accounts. About 30 to 40 families lived in a settlement around the mill, which was attacked by a mob of 250 just three days after Missouri Gov. Lilburn Boggs ordered Mormons driven out of the state or exterminated.

Men, women and children were among the 17 who died at Haun's Mill.

"The women," Eames later wrote, "seeing our situation and expecting no better treatment, took to flight, taking their little ones along with them and running away from a scene of murder which it is impossible to portray."