The tie to Mormon fundamentalism for Short Creek came when Isaac Carling went to Salt Lake City to work in the Baldwin Radio plant. Nathaniel Baldwin was an important Utah inventor and industrialist who became the financial patron of the fundamentalist movement. Many of his corporate officers and other employees were active in the movement in Utah; among them were Lorin C. Woolley, John Y. Barlow, Israel Barlow, Leslie Broadbent, and Lyman Jessop.

Increased pressure from the LDS church served to polarize fundamentalists, and many looked to Short Creek as the future home of the movement. The Utah Legislature elevated "unlawful cohabitation" from a misdemeanor to a felony in 1935, which made the border town look more attractive as a place where practitioners of plural marriage could step across the Utah line quickly to avoid arrest. With the conviction of Price Johnson and I. Carling Spencer in December 1935 in an Arizona court, the state line between Utah and Arizona became even more important, as polygamists could avoid law-enforcement officers from either direction.

In October 1936, the Declaration of United Trust was filed and recorded in Kingman, Arizona, legally creating a trust and taking a giant step toward a united order lifestyle for area polygamists. In November 1942, a new United Effort Plan (UEP) trust was recorded in Kingman, Arizona, strengthening and making clearer the legality of the trust.