Every report about the Foster family's Rockdale Ranch, near Moab, Utah, starts with photographs. The architecture is stunning. Brightly colored house fronts seem precariously tacked on to the enormous sandstone rock. Beyond the facades are large internal rooms carved into the sandstone. Ceilings, walls and floors reveal the rock they were cut from.
The views from these homes are extraordinary: scrub and dirt spread out forever under the enormous Utah sky.
The ranch sits on 82 acres of state school trust land that is leased from the government at a cost of about $6400 per year.
Bob Foster
Bob Foster was a polygamous fundamentalist Mormon. He was excommunicated from the LDS Church in 1972 and convicted for bigamy in 1974, for which he served a prison term of 20 days. This experience motivated him to provide a place of safety where his family might be free of persecution.
Foster was also convinced that the end of the world was imminent. He started the ranch in 1979 with a 50 year lease. He did not expect that the government would last long enough to renew. He expected society to crumble amid disasters and wars. Foster taught that the future struggle and instability would not be the end of the world, but the movement of the world into a new and different epoch. "It isn't that it is coming to the end of the world, it is coming to the beginning of a different one," he said, adding that "I'm not the only one who sees we're headed for brick wall."
Rockdale Ranch is the outworking of those two main elements of Bob Foster's beliefs. They also influenced his son, Enoch, who took over as leader after Bob passed away in 2008.
Foster's Family
Bob Foster's first wife divorced him. I haven't found any details about her, for example, how long they were married, why she left, how many children they had and what became of them. I don't know if he supported them after the divorce. This is important because of Foster's involvement in promoting plural marriage among LDS. He was considered an intellectual, who had taught at Seminary before his excommunication. He was closely affiliated with Anne Wilder, who is a pro polygamy activist in Salt Lake City.
According to the Denver Post article, Bob Foster had three wives, 38 children and 82 grandchildren. Of these, one wife, 6 children and an undetermined number of grandchildren lived in the community.
“When it comes to plural marriage, Foster admits he is considered a radical.
He urged his wives to find careers … Second wife Susan went to Durango to work in accounting. Fourth wife Carla went to medical school and is now a physician near Salt Lake City. Third wife Karen opted to stay at the rock, where she raises Yorkshire terriers, tends an organic garden and runs a trash transfer station several days a week in La Sal.
"You don't control peoples' lives," Foster emphasizes. "That is wicked. You set them free."
Susan and Carla spend time at Rockland. Each of them has a cavern blasted into the rock so that homes can be built for them if they should decide to live here full-time again.
Most of Foster's children have lived off the rock for periods with their mothers. Some want nothing to do with Rockland. But some are on board with their father's vision.”
Foster's son, Enoch, lives at the Ranch with his 2 wives and many children.
One of Foster's daughters, Melinda Morrison, claimed that only 6 of her siblings (including her) had chosen to live polygamy.
In 2008, Melinda conceded that her sister wife had moved to Park City. Melinda said, “We had different ways of doing things.”
In 2012, responding to an article in The Atlantic, Melinda claimed to be living in a plural marriage at the ranch. She had some interesting comments about it.
“Just like all of our women do not choose this lifestyle. Not all of the Men do either. I am one of six out of thirty eight siblings that Chose, Yes chose! this life style. In fact I stunned my husband when I told him that I wanted to make the choice. It is a choice that I continue to make everyday. My children also have a choice. I would never push it on my children. I do not even want them to choose it unless it is absolutely what they want in their inner most heart. We woman have a choice. It is not pushed on us by powerful men. In fact the Men here are some of the most descent (sic) humble and kind hearted you could ever meet. Which is why several woman are willing to share them. They would rather have part of very good Man than all of a partly good.” (italics mine).
On the subject of government assistance, Melinda wrote:
“For your information we are very much against government assistance and live off the sweat of our own labors. Be careful next time you make snap judgement about people you don't know.”
Another of Foster's daughters, Anna Knecht, lives at Rockdale and is monogamous.
Other Residents
In 2006, five families moved to the rock from Colorado City. There were claims that they had been kicked out of Colorado City because the older men wanted the young girls for themselves. The Fosters insist Rockdale is not at all related to the FLDS. It isn't a polygamous community. It's not even a Mormon community. Residents are Mormon, Baptist, FLDS and 'hybrids'.
One of Enoch's wives, Lilian, said anyone who wants to live at Rockland Ranch has to pass a six-month "trial period" where they are expected to spend time in the community and ingratiate themselves with their future neighbours before they can buy a home.
Self sufficiency
Foster raised his family to be self sufficient. Children at the Ranch work alongside their parents in cultivating their own food. They have an orchard, vegetable gardens, cows and chickens. They have a large water storage reservoir on the rock. They have solar panels and a generator. They minimise household utility costs as the rock moderates indoor temperatures. In winter, they use small wood burning stoves to keep their homes warm. Soot from these is discolouring the rock above the chimneys.
Rockdale Ranch is isolated, but the residents embrace modern technology. They have solar power and generators. They have the internet.
We get the impression that Rockdale Ranch is not as forbidding as YFZ Ranch or Hilldale. There are no prairie dresses or swarms of children. There is no temple either (although they have a baptismal font). People seem free to come and go as they please. We have seen that Foster's wives were able to live outside the community. Foster welcomed tourists to his place, until 9/11 happened and the tourists stopped coming.
None of them admit to being on welfare or food stamps. There is no evidence of bankruptcies or bleeding the beast with this group (although, there is a question mark over Foster's first wife).
Foster described himself as an independent fundamentalist. Before embracing plural marriage, he was a seminary teacher in Salt Lake. Two of his wives had been theology students of his. He was known as a colourful character, popular enough with residents of nearby towns and always willing to discuss religion. Locals appreciated the group's hard working reputation and their efforts to be self sufficient.
Bob Foster and his son speak to reporters from time to time. They have allowed photographers on their property. They portray themselves as progressive. Their main concern with publicity is an unwillingness to be labelled doomsday preppers because that carries connotations of rednecks in the backwoods who are ridiculed by society at large.
Scratch the surface, however, and you discover signs that Foster wasn't as radical as he claimed to be regarding polygamy.
Bob Foster was a very good friend of Anne Wilde, a pro-polygamy author, associated with Principal Voices. Wilde knew Foster for 35 years or so. She even owned one of the houses at Rockdale for a while. She said he is the only person she knew who had a grand vision and then accomplished it.
In a post on the website4thefamily.us - Anne wilde reported, "I greatly admire him for his desire to provide an opportunity to raise their children in an atmorsphere where they learn to garden, raise animals, get water and power, repair machinery and build homes along with their academic schooling and religious training." "It's not a sex party..He is a friend to a lot of people and welcomes them down there," Wilde said.
Wilde and Foster appear in a book called Polygamy's Rape of Rachael Strong: Protected Environment for Predators by John R. Llewellyn, published in 2006. According to Llewellyn, Wilde, her husband Ogden Kraut and Foster actively promoted plural marriage among LDS and were seen as intellectuals, able to explain why polygamy should be practiced (even though it's illegal). This disturbing anecdote appears in Llewellyn's book:
One of their proteges was already married and his wife was pregnant with their 6th child. The husband had been attending meetings with Foster and Wilde. As a result, he decided to live plural marriage and had been 'courting' a single mother behind his wife's back. When the single mother asked if his wife was in agreement, he lied and said she was. A phone call from the potential second wife to the first wife revealed the truth. The husband insisted that the theologians who had been teaching him were right. The wife thought she needed to meet these intellectuals for herself.
She wanted to save her marriage. The wife asked Wilde and Foster for help. They ordered her to submit to her husband's wish and agree to plural marriage. They used the Law of Sarah, from Joseph Smith's Book of Abraham. That 'law' said that Sarah 'had the privilege of giving consent but not dissent” - and that the poor woman's husband had the right to 'sacrifice her' if she didn't agree to plural marriage. (Llewellin pp 90 – 93). That meant that he could abandon his wife and her children and refuse to provide for them if she didn't agree with having sister wives.
So, although Bob Foster portrayed himself as fairly relaxed by not (publicly) insisting that everyone live plural marriage, he was enough of a fundamentalist to enforce the idea that women who don't agree with it can be abandoned. Although he taught his own family to provide for themselves, he endorsed other men's decisions to leave their wives and children with nothing if they refused to agree to polygamy. And there remains the mystery of his first wife, who divorced him. Did he follow his own advice and abandon her?
There are links between groups of polygamists. Even independent fundamentalist Mormon polygamists justify their beliefs and behaviour using the same texts, including the Bible, the Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants. They seem quite heartless in their treatment of women who don't agree with them.
