Caldwell County in northwestern Missouri became the principal designated settlement area for Mormons in the state during the 1830s. Intended as a place where the Saints could gather with less risk of bloodshed, it developed into a substantial center of Mormon settlement. Its promise of refuge, however, did not keep the movement’s expansion or the conflicts around it within the county’s boundaries.

Designation and Settlement

In 1836, the Missouri legislature designated sparsely populated Caldwell County as a zone for Mormon settlement, hoping that relocation there would forestall further violence. Most Mormons in the state moved into the county from adjacent areas that had proved less welcoming. The measure formalized a place for the community to gather, following earlier expulsions from other parts of Missouri, while also concentrating its growing population in a defined area.

Far West and Expansion

The county quickly became more than a designated refuge. By 1838, Mormon settlers had purchased about 250,000 acres in Caldwell County from the federal government and established a thriving town, Far West. The scale of the land acquisition and the growth of the town marked the community’s increasing presence in the region. Caldwell County was thus both a settlement zone assigned by the state and a base from which Mormon communities continued to expand.

Regional Tensions

At first, the movement of settlers into Caldwell County appeared to ease tensions between Mormons and non-Mormon neighbors. That respite proved limited. In the summer of 1838, Mormons crossed the county line into neighboring Daviess County and began establishing large settlements there; conflict erupted in the new area. The episode made the county line a measure of the limits of the legislature’s plan: concentrating settlement in Caldwell County had not contained the broader contest over Mormon expansion. In the book’s account, Caldwell County matters not only as the location of Far West, but as the center of an attempted accommodation that could not keep regional tensions from spreading.