Arizonans claiming they belong to the "United Kingdom of God" have founded a community within Sawtooth National Forest in extreme northwestern Utah - and say they will live there forever.
Group members plan to build a mill and work the 700 acres of mineral claims they have staked out on the national forest. Their claims are filed under the name of the "Ensign Company."The group's leader said they are not polygamists, fundamentalists or members of any Christian sect. They are simply miners who study the Bible daily, he said.
Yost residents aren't thrilled about the group's presence, but the Forest Service says they can camp at the site to work their lawful mining claims. Whether entire families can live at the site is a "gray area," said Jerry Green, the Forest Service district ranger at Burley, Idaho.
The cluster of tents and old buses is located on George Creek, 30 miles from any paved road. Members have used a bulldozer to improve access and expect they'll need the dozer to keep their camp open during the heavy snows to come.
A glaze of ice and snow already covers some of the ground. Firewood is stacked up. Wood smoke hangs in the air. A woman named Marvel Sedgwick washes clothes outside beside a wood-fired water heater, and a drying contraption holds a tremendous amount of laundry.
The community's residents say the temperature Tuesday night was 7 degrees. When the Deseret News reporter arrived, a deer watched from a high, snowy ridgeline.
At least three men, half a dozen children from infancy to 12 years old and three women were seen. That didn't include other people who stayed inside the tents and could be heard talking and laughing.
The children don't go to school, other than the group's own classes, according to the group members.
The tiny ranching town of Yost is four miles down the canyon. Burley is 70 miles off.
Some Yost residents are worried about the new camp, which was planted there early in the summer.
Although the group members keep to themselves and have not caused any confrontations, "You see 'em with sidearms," said one Yost resident who asked not to be named. "All the neighbors seem to be concerned."
Another said Yost people don't even know how many live in the new community because "you go there and everybody goes in. You don't see them out or nothing."
Frank Miller, 50, the group's leader, filed suit against one Yost man for allegedly trying to keep them from crossing private land to reach their compound in the national forest. A hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. Monday in Brigham City.
Turning his attention to the camp, Miller refused to say how many are in the group or to give everyone's name.
Inside the cook tent, the only tent that the reporter was allowed to visit during a trip to the camp Wednesday evening, a woman named Shanon and a little girl named Delana were cooking at a wood stove.
Lanterns, tables and a bed were in the tent. Children came and went. An unloaded pistol lay on a table.
Miller and two other men then walked the reporter to an old Greyhound bus for the interview. The bus had been converted to living quarters, with shelves of books, a computer run by electricity from a gas-powered generator, electric lights and a newly installed wood stove.
Among the clutter were a couple of swords and a rifle standing together.
Asked why he would not say how many lived there, Miller said, "Well, because it's taking a census. God told King David not to take a census, and King David took a census and a plague came against the people and thousands died."
Therefore, the Bible says not to allow censuses, he said. "We take the Bible literally. We don't try to twist it around. You have two gods _ the god of the land, that's the government . . . Most Mormons and Christians have begun to pay the god of the land."
Miller expressed fierce independence throughout the interview. "Our interest here is privacy," he said.
He denied being a polygamist, pointing out that you have to be married to more than one woman to be a polygamist, and he isn't married at all; he is divorced. Concerning questions like that, he said it was like asking "how many women I've slept with . . . just those questions alone are offensive."
Mike Sedgwick, who was identified by a Forest Service official as Miller's son-in-law, said there are three families at the camp. But nobody would say how many are in the families, and one said friends are sometimes there, too.
Miller said he staked the first of three tungsten claims in 1968. The group intends to build a mill and mine the deposits. "That's what our forefathers did; that's what the pioneers did," he said.
"It's such a good (tungsten) discovery," Sedgwick said. "We can make our living."
According to Miller, refined tungsten is worth about $60 per "unit" of 20 pounds.
Sedgwick said the men worked in construction jobs to earn a "grubstake to get us up here." He said he was earning $1,000 a week in San Diego before they came here.
"We're not Christians because Christians broke too many laws. We're not fundamentalists or Mormons or polygamist-oriented . . . We don't join any groups. We're not a church," Miller said.
Christians have observances derived from the pagan religion, like Christmas and, worst of all, Halloween, he said. "All those things are against what's in the Bible . . . Christ wasn't born on the 25th of December."
He said one local resident on horseback tried to run them down.
Jeff Miller, his adult son, said, "We believe in Jesus, we believe in the Bible."
Frank Miller added, "I guess you'd say we belong to the United Kingdom of God." He said that is an organization not of this world.
"Oh, now and then we pray together," he continued. "We bless our food . . . We believe _ I guess if you want to believe in any law, in the laws of Moses."
Asked if they believe God is directing them, he said, "We don't believe that God is involved in everything we do . . . Being as he is God he is in control of everything."
"We do believe in the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, the power of the Holy Ghost," Jeff Miller said. "Of course we believe God can direct us, but not necessarily on a second-to-second basis."
Sedgwick said, "We all felt we should go to this mine . . . However God influenced us . . . we didn't get a revelation to come up here like a big voice in our ear or a big vision . . . We felt it was the right thing to do or obviously we wouldn't be here."
Asked about the children's education, Miller said, "We do the same thing that a lot of Americans do; we teach our children at home . . . They (schools) teach too much socialism _ way too much. And they teach us to give up our constitutional rights and enjoy it . . .
"It's been proven that if you do a good home-study course, that they can score higher on their tests than at a school. Proven that. I went through that myself and proved that."
Law books stood on a shelf in the bus, and Miller said, "We do a lot of studying . . . We study the law, the constitutional law. We study music, the arts, everything."
At another point, he commented, "We're like a lot of Americans _ we don't like the government's social programs or educational programs."
He said they don't ask anything from the government, but they pay their taxes, as in gasoline tax or sales tax.
Sedgwick said the government wants to take away constitutional rights. "They want to make our decisions for us," he said.
"For instance, if we want to mine our claims, they want us to tell them everything we do . . . The law says we have the right to mine this."
The tungsten vein shows that it is an extensive deposit, even at the surface, they said. So far, their mine goes in only 100 feet or so.
Miller said the U.S. Forest Service wants them to put up a bond on their mining activity, which they haven't done. Asked if they would in the future, he said, "We'll cross that road when we get to it . . . Do we have a right to take that ore out? Yes, we do."
Asked about health care at the camp, he said, "Well, each of us have CPR (training in cardio-pulmonary resuscitation), and I used to drive ambulance service . . . If somebody had appendicitis or had a broken leg, we'd take them to the hospital."
On the question of whether they have caused any pollution in the stream that runs close to the camp, he said, "No, there's no problem. None. Zero. See, we believe again in God's common law."
If the Forest Service tried to halt their mining, "there'd be lawsuits," he said. And if people got together to get them off their claims, that would amount to "a criminal conspiracy," and criminal charges would be filed against those people.
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to the `United Kingdom of God.' ~
Input file was /asst/csi/1102/pass2/0130 Output file was /asst/csi/1102/pass3/0152 Under mining law, group can camp on forest land
Jerry Green, the district ranger at Burley, Idaho, in charge of this part of Sawtooth National Forest, says the new community has filed mining claims on forest land.
"These people are in fact miners," he said. "Under the mining laws, they're allowed to camp on their claims for mining purposes." Their operation is called the Ensign Company, he said.
Asked if whole families are allowed to move in, under the mining law, he said, "Well, I don't know. It's kind of a gray area."
The Forest Service approved their work through the summer and is now asking for more details about what they intend to do in the future, he said. It may become necessary to do a new formal assessment of the mineral values and write an environmental assessment if a mill is to be built.