Episode 264: The Raid on Short Creek, Part IV: Hunting Rabbits With an Elephant Gun

Those listening to radio station KTAR at 9am on Sunday, July 26, 1953, would have heard a familiar voice come across the airwaves. It was J. Howard Pyle, a longtime fixture at the station, who in recent years had made the astounding leap to Arizona's highest elected office.

In fact, he was less than a year into his second term. And those paying attention to his rich, radio-trained voice heard something that would have the whole state talking. His address that morning started with, quote,

Before dawn today, the state of Arizona began and now has substantially concluded a momentous police action against insurrection within her own borders, end quote. Okay, that's definitely an attention-grabbing lead if I've ever heard one, but he continues, quote, Arizona has mobilized and used its total police power to protect the lives and futures of 263 children. They are the product

and the victims of the phallus conspiracy you could possibly imagine, end quote. the phallus conspiracy involving 263 children you say this does sound serious and then he got right into the heart of the matter more than 120 peace officers moved into short creek in mojave county at four o'clock this morning they have arrested almost the entire

population of a community dedicated to the production of white slaves who are without hope of escaping this degrading slavery from the moment of their birth, end quote. And it goes on and on like this, diving deep into the details in the preparation for this raid, and more statements about this pernicious slavery happening within Arizona's borders.

By the time Pyle was making this oration over the airwaves, Shore Creek had been secured by law enforcement for hours, and warrants had been served on dozens of people. Thus, the 1953 raid, the one residents of Short Creek, and later Colorado City, would literally learn about in school, had gone off nearly as planned, and at this stage of events, looked to be the most successful one of

its kind. It's only with the benefit of hindsight that we realize that Pyle may have wanted to go just a little lighter on the rhetoric. I'm your host, David Ruckhausen, and you are listening to AZ, the History of Arizona. Episode 264, The Raid on Short Creek, Part 4, Hunting Rabbits with an Elephant Gun.

Welcome back, everyone. Last week, we talked about the election of J. Howard Pyle to the governorship of Arizona, and how he had been at the job for only two months before the hot potato that was Short Creek landed right in his lap. As I made abundantly clear in that episode,

Pyle had the same moral revulsion to the polygamy practiced by the fundamentalists along the Utah border, but he determined to be a bit smarter than the average bear when it came to actually doing something about it. Well, this week, it's time to actually get to the thing I've been alluding to for three episodes, as Pyle will use the $50,000 given to him by the state legislature to conduct his raid

and put all his planning into practice. Of course, we should all remember the old saying about how no battle plan survives contact with the enemy. The date chosen for the raid was Sunday, July 26, 1953. and quite honestly, I don't have a good answer for why they chose that particular day.

Maybe Pyle was a fan of playwright George Bernard Shaw and wanted to celebrate his birthday in style. And if my delivery was too dry, that was total and utter sarcasm. What we do know is that the day before, Saturday, July 25th, the residents of the town of Williams were awed and curious about the stream of law enforcement vehicles

pulling up to the high school. According to historian Martha Sontag Bradley, the official rumor going around was that the superintendent of the Arizona Highway Patrol had called for a special traffic school. And I don't mean this was the rumor that the curious onlookers in Williams told themselves. This is literally what some of the men and women who are about to participate

in the raid thought as they gathered in northern Arizona. Remember that Pyle had wanted absolute secrecy to make sure this raid went off without a hitch. So as the 60 or 70 highway patrolmen, deputy sheriffs, national guardsmen, and liquor control agents gathered, only a handful knew the true purpose of the meeting.

All these officers of the law were joined by civilians, attorneys, and social service workers in the high school's upstairs auditorium, where the highway patrol laid out the reason for the gathering. They were going to raid Short Creek and arrest every polygamist they could find. The plan that was laid out was basically a coordinated pincer movement, with one group coming from the east, taking the long route north from Flagstaff, crossing Navajo Bridge,

which we all remember from episode 202, then going through Fredonia to get to Short Creek. That may seem like quite the drive, but the other group was going to go through Las Vegas, then descend down from Hurkin, Utah, striking from the northwest. Sontag Bradley says having law enforcement come from this direction

was to give the illusion of support from Utah because, as you will recall, that state had decided that they definitely did not want to turn at this particular game of hot potato. Both teams were to reach Short Creek at the same time to conduct the raid,

which I will say is a feat of coordination considering the lack of GPS or cell phones at the time. As part of this briefing, maps taken by the Air National Guard were displayed, with markings showing the routes of each group and the position of roadblocks to keep other traffic from interfering with the operation.

Each patrolman also received a map of Short Creek with a red circle around the house for which he was personally responsible, and was assigned a number corresponding to a family. Like any good operation, however, Sontag Bradley says that everyone was told the basic plan, but nobody below management knew the whole detail of the operation. Again, secrecy was key,

so everyone learned only as much as they needed to carry out their assigned role.