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Over the next century, Nauvoo became a sleepy, almost entirely Roman Catholic river burg, whose hot events were weekly Fish Fridays and Chicken Wednesdays. Its working men labored in nearby Keokuk, Iowa, but their number shrank relentlessly as young people left. "By the time I moved here 10 years ago, it was pretty close to a retirement community," says Kathy Wallace, editor of the 500-circulation Nauvoo New Independent. At one point the only grocery closed for half a year for lack of business. When the Latter-day Saints, who had been trickling back for years, bought land in a historically Mormon part of town called the Flats and built a Mormonized Colonial Williamsburg called Nauvoo Restoration that drew 250,000 tourists a year, the income was welcome.
Not that there were no tensions. Mormon culture, for all its energy and sterling family values, can seem triumphal and even clannish to outsiders. Ken Millard, a Latter-day Saint who is also Nauvoo's city planner, admits that even after a century's exile, some Mormon tourists exhibited "an arrogance and ownership" regarding the town. Main Street merchants traded stories about shoppers who, arriving at the checkout, inquired, "Are you a Saint?" and if the answer was no, walked out, leaving the clerk holding the bag.
And then on Easter 1999, Gordon Hinckley, the Saints' president and prophet, announced that the church would rebuild the great Nauvoo Temple. Its agents were so confident that they applied for a building permit and scheduled groundbreaking for later the same month. The city council debate ran along monetary lines. The rebuilt temple would draw an estimated 1 million dollar-wielding visitors. But the pilgrims would strain the taxpayer-financed roads, sewers and police force, with its current night watch of one officer.
In the end, decency, pragmatism and fear of litigation triumphed. Says Jane Langford, the New Independent's owner: "It goes against the grain here to prevent people from using their own land." Plus, it's hard to stop them. Unlike locales that have contested the Mormons' current wave of temple building (a dispute in Belmont, Mass., seems destined for the Supreme Court), Nauvoo had no zoning laws and no desire to lock legal horns with an opponent worth some $30 billion. When the Mormons anted up $471,000 for town expenses, they got their permit. Most of the townspeople, says Wallace, "were proud of the council for getting some money out of it."