In the early-morning hours of July 26, 1953, more than 100 Arizona state police officers and soldiers with the National Guard entered Short Creek. Bradley said there is evidence that someone from within the Arizona Attorney General's Office had tipped off FLDS leaders about the raid. The some 400 inhabitants of Short Creek were "waiting in the school yard singing 'America' beneath a waving flag as the authorities arrived," a United Press article read.

Some 36 men were arrested. Eighty-six women and 263 children were taken into welfare custody.

What is also interesting, Bradley said, is the lack of violence in both Short Creek and Eldorado. "They anticipated violence, but there was no violence," she said.

Media reports of the 1953 raid quickly spread. More than 100 reporters rushed to the area, reportedly invited by Pyle to observe the raid. Although the raid took place in the same week the Korean War cease-fire was announced, the raid was covered by Time, Newsweek and other news outlets.

Pyle called it "a momentous police action against insurrection," and described the fundamentalists as "the foulest conspiracy you could possibly imagine," saying it amounted to white slavery.

The day after the raid, the Deseret News published an editorial supporting the action. "Law-abiding citizens of Utah and Arizona owe a debt of gratitude to Arizona's Governor Howard Pyle and to his police officers who, Sunday, raided the polygamous settlement at Short Creek and rounded up its leaders for trial. The existence of this community on our border has been a smudge on the reputations of our two great states. We hope Governor Pyle will make good his pledge to eradicate the illegal practices conducted there 'before they become a cancer of a sort that is beyond hope of human repair."'

However, Pyle's actions became a public-relations disaster. Coming on the heels of the totalitarianism of Adolf Hitler and World War II, Americans were sensitive to strong police action. Media publications criticized the raid as "un-American," while others questioned how children can be involved in a government insurrection. "It seemed like an extreme response," Bradley said.

Pyle, a close friend of Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater and a rising star within the Republican party, was said to have been a favorite for the party's presidential nomination. Bradley said the negative publicity over the raid was blamed for Pyle's fall from political grace and he also lost his gubernatorial re-election in 1954.