Colonia Juárez is a Mormon settlement in northern Mexico, established in the context of efforts by polygamous Saints to escape prosecution in the United States. Its history anchors a broader migration into Mexico and helps distinguish the older settlement from nearby Colonia LeBaron, which later became a center of fundamentalist activity.

Settlement and Setting

In 1886, a group of polygamous Saints bought 50,000 acres along the Rio Piedras Verdes, about 150 miles southwest of El Paso, Texas. They were seeking to avoid the cohabitation prosecutions then sweeping Utah. By the time the first members of the LeBaron family moved south in 1902, about 3,500 Mormons were already living near the settlement, at the foot of the Sierra Madre Occidental. This community was known as Colonia Juárez.

The settlement’s origins place it within a longer history of Mormon migration across the border. It offered a setting beyond the immediate reach of Utah authorities, while remaining part of a community already established by earlier arrivals. The book presents Colonia Juárez as a point of reference for subsequent movements into the region, rather than as the same settlement as the later LeBaron community.

The Nearby Colonia LeBaron

In 1944, Dayer LeBaron received a revelation directing him to buy desert land about thirty-five miles outside Colonia Juárez. He cleared the mesquite-covered land, planted beans, and named the settlement Colonia LeBaron. It soon became the base of operations for his expanding fundamentalist sect. Its proximity to Colonia Juárez links the two places geographically, but their histories and roles remain distinct: Colonia Juárez was the older settlement, while Colonia LeBaron was founded later as a center for Dayer LeBaron’s group.

Migration and Family Ties

The movement of the Stubbs family illustrates how Colonia Juárez formed part of a wider pattern of relocation among fundamentalist communities. Lavina Stubbs spent her first fifteen years in Short Creek before her father fell out with LeRoy Johnson, joined the LeBaron group, and moved the family to Mexico. In 1958, Lavina moved to Colonia LeBaron; the following year, at sixteen, she became a plural wife of Joel LeBaron. Her family’s move connects the established Short Creek community, the Mexican settlements, and the networks of religious authority that shaped marriage and household life.

A Regional Refuge

Colonia LeBaron, rather than Colonia Juárez, later served as a refuge for Kenyon Blackmore. After federal indictments in a fraud case, Blackmore went to Mexico, where Gwendolyn Blackmore and Lavina Stubbs LeBaron sheltered him at Colonia LeBaron. This episode underscores the importance of separating the two locations when tracing the book’s events: Colonia Juárez is the older settlement that supplies the region’s historical context, while the later refuge and sect base was the separate community nearby.