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Beginning in 1937, church members began buying up former Mormon-owned properties. By the 1950s, a few visionaries had begun restoring their ancestors' homes. But development really took off in 1962 with the founding of Nauvoo Restoration Incorporated (NRI), an organization that hoped "to provide an historically authentic physical environment for awakening a public interest in and appreciation of the story of Nauvoo." One of the board members of NRI was a senior vice president of Colonial Williamsburg. The 1970s brought an annual outdoor musical pageant called "Nauvoo: City of Joseph," a new visitors' center, and the incorporation of the Nauvoo Stake (an ecclesiastical unit of the church, similar to a diocese). |