Building Community: Mormons

Many Mormons came to the Moses Lake area from Utah beginning in the 1940s. Drawn by the promise of Columbia Basin farmland, they comprised about 15 percent of the area's newcomers. Remina Jorgenson remembers the population growth in town and in her church:

It was amazing how it grew once the water came into the valley. Every week we had new people coming, ever so many. When my husband went in as the branch president [of the local LDS church] there were 350. In seven years it increased to over 1000. That was just from our church, so you get some idea of how it was increasing.

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