| "I thought, we'll never have another year like that," said Randy Mankin, the part-time city administrator and full-time publisher and editor of the Eldorado Success, a weekly newspaper. "Then in mid-March this thing came along -- like a UFO landed north of town." The polygamists had arrived, and Eldorado (pronounced el-doh-ray-doh) -- population 1,951 -- hasn't been the same since. "Your first question is 'Why Eldorado?' " said Jeri Whitten, director of the Schleicher County Public Library, which nowadays has a waiting list for its small collection of books about the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whose members are Eldorado's newest neighbors. Local and state officials are trying to find out why the group chose this location, especially because of recent allegations against the sect -- which broke away from the mainstream Mormon Church when it banned polygamy in 1890 -- of child abuse, forced marriage and fraud. The sect, known as the FLDS, is led by self-proclaimed prophet Warren Jeffs, 48, who, along with two of his brothers, was accused in a civil lawsuit filed in Salt Lake City this summer of sodomizing a nephew when the boy was 5 and of coercion for trying to keep the boy from discussing the abuse. Jeffs and his brothers have denied the allegations through a church spokesman. The FLDS practices plural marriage, a spiritual ritual that is arranged by the group's prophet through what the church teaches are revelations from God. Having multiple wives, members believe, gives them access to the highest level in heaven, the Celestial Kingdom. Today, the fundamentalists claim a membership of 10,000 to 12,000, most of them living in the twin cities of Hildale, Utah, and Colorado City, Ariz., where they run their own schools, police departments and businesses and boast families that include dozens of wives and dozens of children. Recent cases brought by Utah and Arizona law enforcement authorities to prosecute the problems associated with polygamy -- bigamy, criminal nonsupport of children, child rape, forced marriage of minor girls and fraud of the welfare system -- have shone the spotlight on the insular community. That attention, said a Salt Lake City lawyer who speaks for Jeffs and the FLDS, prompted the sect to look for a new "outpost and retreat" in Texas. Rodney Parker said the Eldorado compound will be used by about 500 church members, who have no interest in political or civic involvement in Eldorado. "People can go there to concentrate and focus on their religious mission without the interferences and pressures they've been subjected to" in Arizona and Utah, Parker said. "They're a very private people, and right now they're feeling very picked on." But the group's efforts here are attracting widespread attention. An informal squad of local businessmen and officials flies over the sect's compound regularly. Schleicher County Sheriff David Doran is in regular contact with the group, and the Eldorado Success has been running front-page stories on it regularly. "It's been a nice town until now. Everybody's like kin to each other; we all know each other," said Eldorado resident Amelia Rodriguez, 60, a retired housekeeper. "I get kind of scared because there's no telling what's going to happen. . . . I don't like it. I don't feel it's a good place for them to be." The news that the FLDS was creating a settlement began trickling in at the end of winter after a local pilot noticed that concrete foundations were being laid for three large buildings on a plateau about five miles north of town. He relayed the news to the sheriff. Then a Texas Parks and Wildlife game warden reported a man on the property for hunting without a state license or proof that he had taken a hunter safety class. He was from Arizona and "he said he was hunting for food," said game warden Doug Seamands. Doran tracked down the representative of record for YFZ Land LLC of Utah, the purchaser of the 1,691 acres. That representative, David Allred, said the property was to be used as a hunting lodge for the company's clients. But the answer didn't sit right with residents.
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