You’ll find George Washington astride his horse at the entrance, just yards away from the Liberty Bell, which stands in the center of 13 Colonies Plaza. Almost completed is the nearby Isaiah Thomas Print Shop. And the Green Dragon Tavern should be finished by America’s 250th birthday coming up on July Fourth.
Not exactly the first things you’d expect to run into on a flat, wind-swept piece of isolated farmland located 6 miles from the Hurricane town center.
But this is no mirage. Nor is it a gimmick behind a new housing development, or a themed golf course.
The most iconic buildings and people that 250 years ago delivered the American Revolution are indeed being brought to life 10 miles due south of the I-15 freeway.
Liberty Village, they’re calling it. A place where the principles from America’s past can reside in the present to help them survive into the future.
Liberty Village is the brainchild of Lex Howard, a St. George resident and enthusiastic American citizen who will tell you three things shaped his thinking in conjuring Colonial America to southern Utah.
First, he spent a portion of his boyhood years in St. Petersburg, Russia, where his father was attending medical school. This was just after the fall of the Iron Curtain and a young Lex saw firsthand the ill effects left behind by communism. “I learned very early without realizing I was learning it just how special America is,” he says.
Second, he grew up and made a lot of money as he played a key role in building the supplement company his father started, Balance of Nature, into one of the world’s most successful supplement companies.
Third, a few years ago, Lex’s friend Jeff McKenna had just returned from a place called American Village in Montevallo, Alabama, and suggested Lex should also go there for a visit.
Opened in 1999, American Village brings revolutionary America to life with buildings, reenactments and workshops, all designed “to describe America’s role as a bearer of the light of liberty.”
One visit and Lex was hooked. Here was a place, far from the Boston Commons, that is a living, breathing tribute to this country’s founding truths he holds so dear.
He returned home and immediately began plans to bring something similar to the West.
In 2021, Lex launched his philanthropic organization (libertyvillage.org) and set aside 32 acres of property on land Balance of Nature owns on the southwest side of Hurricane. Then he got busy fundraising, soliciting contributions from like-minded Americans — including selling “1776 Memorial Bricks” to line 13 Colonies Plaza. By July of last year, he had raised $32 million. Construction began in September 2025.
Ever since, structures from Colonial America, built to scale, have been emerging out of the ground.
At completion — still a few years and donations away — Liberty Village has plans to have some 30 outbuildings, cupolas and play areas — everything from the Old North Bridge, to St. John’s Church, to Mount Vernon, to Jamestown, to Plymouth, to Valley Forge, to the Betsy Ross House, to Independence Hall.
Already, the fledgling village is hosting school groups, church groups and others, with reenactors dressed in Colonial attire bringing the 1770s to life.
“There’s no ulterior motive, no hidden agenda,” assured Ellen Jensen, Liberty Village’s director of marketing, on a recent tour. “Only a desire to bring history to life. And bring people together.”
Liberty Village, Lex insists, favors no political party.
“I hate, or at the very least I despise, partisanship,” he says. “I’m doing this to be a good citizen, to help preserve and save our nation.
“Through the vehicle of American history, we want to inspire people, especially children, to want to better understand and appreciate why our form of government is unique. Americans have come to believe over time that there are other governments out there the same as ours. And it’s just not true. What we have doesn’t exist anywhere else. It’s that special. But over time we citizens have passed much of our power to the government and we no longer participate like we should, other than every two or three years (at election time). Citizenship is an office, we need to appreciate that and take advantage of it.”
In his case, that means bringing the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution to literally stand sentinel in the red rocks of southern Utah. To American citizen Lex Howard, there is no better way to connect us to our roots than to bring those roots back to life.
