NAUVOO, Ill. — Chandler Whipple recently logged his third 1,000-mile drive from Salt Lake City to this tiny, out-of-the-way town overlooking the Mississippi River, where history and faith have forged one of Illinois' hottest tourism draws.
Fellow Mormons Mark and Holly Gold also made the long drive from Utah to western Illinois recently to revisit ground they consider sacred, built by church founders who were chased west more than a century-and-a-half ago amid waves of violence.
Up to 1.5 million visitors a year have flooded this town of just 1,100 people since 2002, when the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints opened a towering, five-story temple that draws both Mormons and non-Mormons from around the world — some to gaze only at the outside, since only the most devout Mormons are allowed to enter.
The lavish temple, with a tower and spire 165 feet high, has fueled a fivefold tourism jump in Nauvoo, said Kim Farah, a church spokeswoman in Utah. Other attractions, including the home and grave of church founder Joseph Smith, drew only about 200,000 visitors a year before plans for the temple fanned interest in 1999.
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Farah says Nauvoo's tourism jumped to about 1 million people a year after the temple was announced, then soared to 1.5 million when it opened in 2002, more than doubling first-year attendance three years later at Springfield's Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum.
Crowds thinned slightly after the opening-year rush, Farah said, but total visitors still number more than 900,000 a year.
Officials estimate that 70 percent of Nauvoo's visitors are Mormons, lured by deep and tragic roots in the town that church leaders founded in the 1830s after leaving New York, Ohio and Missouri.
As the frontier town grew, once nearly equaling Chicago with 15,000 residents, neighbors became distrustful of the new sect and leery of their increasing clout. Quarrels escalated to violence, ending with the shooting death of church founder Smith and forcing Mormons west in 1846, eventually to found Salt Lake City.
Their abandoned temple was desecrated by vandals, then gutted by an arson fire in 1848. A tornado later knocked down most of its walls, leaving little more than foundation stones until a church member's anonymous donation rebuilt the temple as a memorial.
Worldwide, the 12.5 million-member church has more than 100 temples, which are used for marriages, baptisms and other rites, but not for worship. Compared will the others, the remote Nauvoo temple serves a small population of nearby Mormons.
"This is really, you might say, a tourist temple. It's here because it's historically significant," said David Wright, who controls administrative duties for the Nauvoo temple.
Temples are sacred, and only about 30 percent of Mormons qualify to enter them, based on standards that include tithing, moral character and adhering to prohibitions on alcohol, tobacco and caffeine, Wright said.
Paula Mason, who frequently drives more than two hours from Peoria to visit Nauvoo, says just seeing the temple is enough.
"It's just a peaceful place where you can leave the world . . . and you can't find that anywhere else," Mason, 67, said as she sat on a bench across the street from the temple entrance.
Information: Nauvoo Temple is located in Nauvoo, Ill., on Illinois 96, also known as the Great River Road, in western Illinois. www.beautifulnauvoo.com or www.historicnauvoo.net.
