As the Saints were feeling persecution in Missouri in the 1830s, Jews were fleeing persecution in Europe, beginning their return to Palestine and ‘back to the soil’ after centuries of landlessness. Then in 1881, the Jewish ‘back to the soil’ movement spread to America with approximately forty agricultural communities being established by the Jews in New Jersey, the Dakotas, Kansas, Oregon, Colorado, Louisiana, and finally, Utah. The first Jewish colonists arrived in Utah in 1911 and established the hamlet of Clarion, south of Gunnison on the Sevier River. Lack of water, funds and experience doomed the experiment from the beginning. It ended in 1916, becoming the last Jewish attempt to colonize land in the United States.
Goldberg, Robert Alan, “Building Zions: A Conceptual Framework.” Utah Historical Quarterly, Spring 1989, pp. 165-179.