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They have only gradually begun to realize the implications of the deal. Mormons now own an estimated 32% of the town land. An extension of Brigham Young University sits where there had been a Catholic boarding school. Houses in the Flats once worth $20,000 now go for $250,000, and tax assessments have risen accordingly--longtime residents have every incentive to sell and leave. Meanwhile, temples like Nauvoo's serve as magnets for Mormon retirees, who take up spiritual tasks such as baptizing deceased ancestors of believers. It will take just 900 such immigrants to effect a Mormon majority in the town. Says Langford, the publisher, grimly: "They want to take back Nauvoo, and since they can't do it with guns, they are doing it with money." If so, in the first of what would no doubt be many social changes, Nauvoo would probably go dry. E-mails Sonja Bush: "I own the Draft House in Nauvoo, and was informed tonight that the city planner (Mormon) referred to it as 'a place of sin.' Boy! You should have seen it. Wednesday is 'Chicken Nite' and a lot of our sinners were in their 60s to mid-80s. They were kicking up their heels and having a sinful good time!"
It is hard to imagine Millard, the Mormon planner, uttering "place of sin." A worried-looking, bespectacled man provided to the town by the church as part of the temple deal, he is careful to use the word we in discussing the town's future. "We don't want to see change in Nauvoo," he says, "yet there's no way you can stop [it]." This, in a country where change is the secular religion, is an almost unanswerable argument. But Millard gives it the inimitable Mormon spin. "The church believes in unity and harmony, and the official position is to work things out," he says. "But when there's a goal to accomplish, they like it to be accomplished."
--Reported by Julie Grace/Nauvoo