Mormon mega-project in Vermont

Obelisk  in Vermont's White River Valley marking the birthplace of Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLoca24.com.

In perhaps happier Vermont news, voters in Sharon, Royalton, Strafford and Tunbridge have denounced a plan by a Utah engineer and Mormon activist to build a planned community for thousands of people known as “NewVistas”

Residents of Royalton, Sharon, Strafford and Tunbridge overwhelmingly approved resolutions opposing the “NewVistas’’ development.

David Hall, of Provo, has been buying up land on which to build a self-sustaining community of 20,000 on a 5,000-acre grid near the birthplace of Joseph Smith, the founder of the Church of Later Day Saints, aka the Mormons. (I have visited the museum marking Mr. Smith's origins -- quite interesting. A guide tried to get my then 10-year-old younger daughter to become a Mormon; she demurred.)

 “We have used these hills for hunting, fishing, a little bit of everything, and if David Hall comes in and does what he thinks he wants to do, I’m sure we’re not going to have a Tunbridge, or Sharon or Strafford or South Royalton anymore,” Ted Hoyt, an eighth-generation farmer, told Tunbridge Town Meeting.

Having spent a lot of time in the area at issue, I’m very sympathetic to Mr. Hall’s foes, who want to preserve this verdant pocket of old-time villages in a pastoral landscape. But if by some remote chance Mr. Hall gets this project done, you can bet  that it will be among the healthiest, cleanest and best-run places in America, given Mormon rules and habits -- although perhaps not a very exciting place to live.