Abstract

Agricultural villages established in the second decade of the 20th century by Russian Molokans in Glendale, Arizona, and Park Valley, Utah, bore striking similarities, with long, narrow house lots, dwellings aligned along a single village street, and outlying lands allocated for crop production. With the passage of time, the Glendale village lost much of its Russian flavor as families responded to individual opportunities, personal tragedies, and economic disaster by moving away. In contrast, the Park Valley village was struck down by drought and crop failure. Today, the Glendale village is inhabited entirely by non-Molokans, and is on the verge of being consumed by suburban sprawl, while the Park Valley village, abandoned almost 90 years ago, lies nearly hidden in a vast expanse of rangeland. But at each site it is still possible to find traces of a traditional Old World settlement pattern that was unable to survive in the face of new cultural, economic, and physical conditions that the villages' immigrant residents encountered in the American West.

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