Renewal by LDS creates stir in Illinois town

Editor's note: The Deseret Morning News has reported extensively on Nauvoo in previous stories. Here is another perspective.

NAUVOO, Ill. — High upon a bluff overlooking the Mississippi River stands a soaring LDS temple, the biggest building for many miles around. Closed to non-members, it symbolizes the tension that has reshaped life in what was until recently a typical Midwestern town.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opened the rebuilt temple here two years ago, and since then more than half a million people, many from Utah, have come to see it. About 300 LDS Church members have moved here, bringing the population to 1,100.

"There's no religious animosity, but these people have created a big stir," said Bob Soland, a city councilman.

Latter-day Saints have brought a good deal of money to Nauvoo, something that many other towns along the Mississippi River might envy. Places like Warsaw, Ill., 17 miles north, and Fort Madison, Iowa, on the other side of the river, have few apparent prospects and seem to be shriveling away.

In Nauvoo, though, Latter-day Saints have restored two dozen historic buildings to give visitors a sense of what life may have been like here in the 1840s. Cars, many with Utah license plates, creep in and out of a new 200-car garage. There are seven restaurants, all open year-round.

Historic Nauvoo

A temple like the one recently restored stood on the same bluff in the 1840s, when Nauvoo was the center of the Mormon world. It was destroyed during a bloody conflict between Mormons and their enemies in which the religion's founder, Joseph Smith, was killed. Soon after, the Mormon pioneers set out on their epic trek to Utah, where they prospered and built what has become one of the world's fastest-growing religions.

Smith founded the LDS faith in upstate New York, where he said he was guided by an angel to a spot where he discovered gold plates on which ancient prophets had written a series of divine revelations. He led a small band of followers to Nauvoo, and within a few years the group swelled to 10,000, ranking this town, with Chicago, as the two biggest in Illinois. Mormons established their own legal code and raised a militia with about 3,000 men. Smith gained considerable political power and announced plans to run for president.

"Nauvoo is the beginning of a lot of things," said Samuel Park, president of the Illinois Nauvoo Mission, which oversees the church's operations here. "It's a sacred place to us, a place of sacrifice. We're coming back here, and we want to stay."