Two hundred and fifty miles south of Salt Lake City, I take the hurricane exit off Interstate 15. A sign reads 150 miles to Las Vegas. The landscape is prickly pear cactus and dry rabbit brush. The 500-foot cliffs to the north mark the end of the Mojave Desert and the beginning of the Colorado Plateau. I turn left at the Chevron station in the small but bustling city of La Verkin and climb a switchback road. Suddenly, as if transported across continents, the horizon unfolds into either a backdrop for a western or Mars.

A ridge road of red rock stretches across the skyline. Tabletop mesas, large enough to land a 747, rise out of the landscape and stand alone. Cumulus clouds gather in bunches of white puff. The land is rocky and the rock is burnt red. The climate is hot even though one man at the gas station told me, "Before the Mormons arrived in Utah, this area was below zero all year round."

Driving into Virgin you know it’s a working man’s town. There are no gas stations or cafes. The nearest street light is in the next town. There’s nobody on the streets. Derelict cars sit in yards. I open the town hall door just before closing, 3 p.m., to be greeted by Noelle, the town clerk.A 29-year-old blonde originally from Nebraska, she moved to Utah with her husband, whom she met while attending BYU. Her baseball cap rides low on her forehead, hiding her eyes. She cradles the phone on one shoulder and a baby, her fourth, on the other. She’s trying to arrange a meeting with the mayor. She asks, "Are you from an environmental magazine?""No," I tell her. "I’m from southern Arizona." She nods, as if to confirm that is, indeed the correct answer. The pictures on the wall are black-and whites of the pioneers who first settled the Virgin Valley in the late mis-1800s. Three-quarters of the people in the town are direct descendants of pioneers with names like Lee, Cornelius, Spendlove and Wilcox.

A man walks in and hands Noelle a handwritten note, "It’s my official withdrawal from the elections. I can’t be the animal control officer and on the town council at the same time," he declares in a booming voice. She agrees, but tells him he has to sign the paper."Oh, you know who I am."

"Herb Frost is Virgin’s animal control officer. He is a jolly man with a big belly and a full white beard. He has a .22 pistol sticking out of the waistband of his pants and smells like skunk."Thing turned on me in the cage," he says while checking yellow stains on his T-shirt."Why didn’t you shoot it?" asks Noelle."I did but I guess it still got a squirt out. That’s 34 raccoons and I don’t know how many skunks." Frost offers to show me around the town.

As we drive, Frost talks. He was the quick draw champion in the early 1960s at the Silver Slipper Casino in Vegas. He is a retired teamster who started a carpet installing business and then retired again. He settled in Virgin after converting to Mormonism eight years ago. He throws his hands at the vista and yells, "God’s country."We stop at a house off main street and Frost tells the man sitting on the fence that his dogs are loose.

The fence sitter, Karl, opens a can of Busch beer for himself and then hands one to me. Karl is what they call a Jack Mormon: someone who drinks but stays within the church’s social circles."How much money did you make last year?" he asks. He is smiling but his eyes are tight and angry. I tell him I made enough to buy a new fishing pole."Did you come here because of the gun law?""Yes," I said."What are you going to write about us, That we are freaks?"I take a sip of beer. "I just arrived." "I own property, lots of property, but I hate guns." He tells me he owns four or five – "just for protection." Karl gives me another beer for the road and Frost, a deputized sheriff, says it will be okay."Hey," he yells as we drive away. "I own property!" "He’s what you call a piece of work," says Frost.

Next stop is at the home of Thora, an elderly lady who has fallen in her kitchen and can’t get up. It’s here I learn how small Virgin is. Thora is the mayor’s aunt. The teenage girl asking me if the magazine is a "big one" is the mayor’s daughter. The other woman in the room patting me on the back for being so kind is the mayor’s mother. We carefully place Thora in her chair. I ask if she is hurt."Who are you?" she screams.Good question, I think as I walk outside into 100-degree heat.

People in the country owning guns doesn’t surprise me much. I grew up in farm country where guns were common. But Virgin is a right-wing Republican town, where even Orrin Hatch, Utah’s conservative Senator, is considered liberal.

When I ask Frost about the mandatory gun law, he shakes his head and tells me I should save political questions for the mayor.

Jay Lee, the mayor of Virgin, points toward the river. "The Sierra Club says there’s some minnow in there that’s endangered. If they have their way we will have no water left for our farms."Lee, an active member of the Latter Day Saints, the Mormons, is a 56-year-old father of eight who traces his roots back to John D. Lee, the only man hanged for his crimes committed in the Mountain Meadow Massacre of 1857: 120 pioneers were on their way from Arkansas to California when they were suddenly slain by their Mormon guides 60 miles north of Virgin.

I point out that the gun ordinance excuses a person from owning a weapon if they are disabled, are a felon, can’t afford one or their religion doesn’t allow it."Exactly," he responds.So why make it a law to own a gun?" "It helps keep down crime."

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