HILDALE, Utah — Few people talk about vaccinations here. Not to outsiders, anyway.
By and large, the people who live in Hildale, as well as in neighboring Colorado City, just across the state border in Arizona, are fiercely private. High walls surround many of the homes to avoid the prying eyes of strangers.
Measles got in anyway.
As of Friday, 161 cases had been confirmed in Utah and Arizona, the bulk concentrated right along the border in the twin towns collectively known as Short Creek. Eleven people — eight in Utah and three in Arizona — were hospitalized.
It’s now become the site of the second largest measles outbreak in the U.S. this year, behind the outbreak that extended from West Texas into New Mexico, which sickened at least 862 people and killed three. Two were young girls.
Vaccination rates have fallen precipitously in both outbreak areas in recent years and, from the outside, the two have similarities. Both outbreaks took hold in communities that are deeply skeptical of government intervention and mainstream medicine. And both outbreaks largely impacted people with strong ties to religious sects: Mennonites in West Texas and (mostly former) members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) in Short Creek.
But the Short Creek community is also grappling with its recent past — one of polygamy, child removal and a cultlike leader now imprisoned for the sexual assault of minors.
“We had so much trauma,” said Donia Jessop, the mayor of Hildale and a former FLDS member. “Getting kids vaccinated or a booster was not the first thing on our mind.”
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints outlawed polygamy more than 100 years ago. Some members, however, continued to believe that multiple wives benefited men in the afterlife and broke away, becoming the FLDS. One of the places where members settled was Short Creek.
Jessop fondly recalls growing up in the 1970s and ‘80s in the tight-knit community with two moms and scores of brothers, sisters and cousins who were her best friends.
“I had an ideal childhood,” she said. “I was guaranteed a spanking or a meal from any mom in town, because we were raised like a village.”
But polygamy was and is illegal. The practice prompted two federal government raids in Short Creek — one in 1953 and another in 2008. Both times, government officials forcibly took children away from their families temporarily in an attempt to determine whether kids were being abused or neglected.
Children were returned, but the trauma endured. “That made a lot of us FLDS kids very scared of police officers,” said Gloria Steed, who was 14 years old during the 2008 raid. “Afterward, we were extremely hesitant about being told what to do.”
Steed said her mother was born around the time of the 1953 raid and grew up with anti-government and, in turn, anti-vaccine tendencies. “It really impacted her faith and trust in the systems,” said Steed, who wasn’t vaccinated as a child.
Still, there was never a specific religious mandate against the shots, Jessop said. She was vaccinated as a child. (No major religions expressly oppose vaccinations.)
Things changed, Jessop and other former FLDS members said, in 2002. That’s the year Warren Jeffs, the now-incarcerated cultlike leader, became their prophet. An FLDS prophet is considered to be the direct voice of God. He often has dozens of wives.
Briell Decker, Jeffs’ 65th wife, said he spread lies about immunizations.
He “said that vaccines are bad and have stuff in them that makes it so you can’t have children,” Decker, who has since left the FLDS lifestyle, said. The ability to procreate and have lots and lots of babies is critical to keep the community going, Decker and other former members said.
Jeffs exerted more control over the Short Creek community than previous prophets, ex-FLDS members said. He took ownership of their land and homes, they said, even reassigning wives and children to different husbands and fathers, breaking apart families and stripping them of the ability to contact one another.
Jessop, who wasn’t mayor when Jeffs was prophet, also said that Jeffs restricted access to the town’s medical clinics for people he deemed unworthy before shutting the health care system down altogether.
Jeffs was on the FBI’s Most Wanted List before he was arrested in 2006. He is serving life in prison for sexual assault of minors within the FLDS community.
Wounds from the Jeffs’ era in Short Creek run deep. The area has had to work to re-establish the basics: running water, schools and a health care system, including routine medical checkups.
With so much to put back together, making sure kids were caught up on vaccines fell on the list of priorities, Jessop said.
While there are two medical clinics in Short Creek, businesses touting natural and herbal remedies have emerged as a popular stand-in for medical care.
At Paty’s Place, a popular health food store in the area, a store employee said some folks had come in to seek advice for treating measles. The store’s owner, Paty LeBaron, did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment, but wrote on Facebook that she has never “made claims about knowing how to cure measles” and encouraged people “to seek reliable, science-based medical advice from qualified healthcare professionals regarding measles or any other serious health condition.”
A similar phenomenon was seen in West Texas: In the city of Seminole, parents of children sick with measles flocked to Health 2 U for cod liver oil, an unproven remedy touted by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The Covid pandemic made efforts to get routine health care back up and running even more difficult, said Aaron Hunt, a public health expert with the Utah State University Extension Program.
“Parents are trying to do what they think is best for their child,” Hunt said, “but since Covid, they’ve been exposed to a lot of misinformation.”
That makes moms and dads fearful of even rare side effects of vaccines, said Hunt, who works with health care providers across Utah to help them battle vaccine misinformation. (The drop in vaccinations hasn’t just opened the door to measles; whooping cough is also spreading throughout the state.)
“You want to have honest conversations with people and give them the power to make their own decisions for them and their families,” Hunt said.
But now that measles is spreading through the Short Creek community, folks appear to be embracing vaccines. Jessop, the Hildale mayor, said there’s been a “sharp rise” in vaccinations since the outbreak began.
David Heaton, a spokesperson for the Southwest Utah Public Health Department, said the area saw a 14% increase in vaccinations during July through September of this year, compared to the same time period in 2024.
A spokesperson for the Arizona Department of Health Services, however, said current MMR vaccination rates are on par with 2024.
The spread of the virus isn’t contained to the Short Creek area. In the past few weeks, measles exposures have also been reported in the Utah towns of St. George and Hurricane. On Wednesday, Salt Lake County public health officials said it had a probable case, but couldn’t confirm it because the person in question refused to be tested.
Becky Goimarac lives in St. George, about 45 miles from Hildale. Her teenage son was exposed to the virus at a high school cycling event in Park City, Utah, in August. That was the first indication of a measles outbreak in the state.
“I personally wasn’t concerned because my kids are vaccinated,” Goimarac said. “I was more sad that we even have to worry about any of that kind of stuff.”
Steed, the former FLDS member who is now 31, remembers being sick with whooping cough and chickenpox as a child. But she still has reservations about the shots meant to prevent those illnesses.
“I don’t trust the system,” Steed said. “I feel like the doctors are pushing too many vaccines too soon.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, along with the American Academy of Pediatrics, maintains that the childhood vaccine schedule is scrupulously researched to offer the most robust protection in the fewest amount of shots.
Still, Steed allowed her 9-year-old son, Jhonde, to get a few of the shots that she felt were most important so he wouldn’t have to suffer like she did. “I thought that anything I got as a kid, I would be doing my son a favor to get those,” she said. In addition to the chickenpox and whooping cough vaccines, Jhonde got one dose of the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine as a baby. Two doses are recommended for 97% protection.
When the measles outbreak began in Short Creek in late summer, Steed got the MMR shot because she was on a journey to become a surrogate mother. Measles during pregnancy is a strong risk factor for miscarriage or preterm birth. Jhonde got his second MMR dose the same day, Steed said, based on her trust of local doctors and nurses who also grew up in Short Creek.
Steed sees firsthand the benefit of MMR vaccines as the outbreak has grown in her community.
“The vaccines are working. It’s been a blessing to see that,” she said.
“It really comes down to having doctors and nurses willing to listen to the individual experiences of the patients, instead of always trying to pressure them into something because they think that they’re better or smarter,” Steed said. “The medical field can be a bit like a cult, you know.”
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