TURNING VERMONT RED AGAIN:

Nicole Antal, a 30-year-old librarian in Sharon, Vermont, was putting together a town report in late January when she stumbled upon a series of odd land purchases: In just three months, a Utah-based foundation had quietly bought more than 900 acres of nearby farmland, an area larger than Central Park. All of the land was either adjacent or close to the birthplace and memorial of Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon Church. "I've always loved mysteries," says Antal. "And this seemed like a good one."

That evening, when Antal got home to the 450-square-foot house she's building with her husband, she strapped on a headlamp. The house doesn't yet have electricity and she needed to prepare dinner for her 5-year-old son, Robin. She also wanted to poke around online. Standing next to her wood-burning stove, Antal flipped open her precharged laptop and Googled the name of the Utah organization: NewVistas. "This strange website popped up," she says. "It had all these architectural models with fake people walking around. I didn't know what to think."

NewVistas, Antal soon discovered, was started by a wealthy Mormon engineer named David Hall, who wants to build sustainable, high-tech, high-density communities all across the globe. From the looks of things, he hoped to build one right in her backyard, in rural Vermont.

During the next few weeks, Antal was busy starting the year's maple syrup harvest. She also quit her part-time job at the library to focus on homesteading and raising her son. But in her free time, she scoured the NewVistas website and public records, and resolved to write a story for a local blogging platform called Daily UV. When she contacted Hall by e-mail, he replied almost immediately, and, after some back and forth, suggested they speak on the phone. "I was pretty nervous," says Antal, who's shy, with a round face, asymmetrical haircut, glasses, and a French accent from growing up in Belgium. "Talking on the phone is very uncomfortable for me. But it was also exciting."

On the scheduled day, Antal parked her red Toyota Tacoma pickup next to a nearby bridge, known among locals for having reliable phone reception. She pulled out a Moleskine notebook, summoned her courage, and dialed Hall. They introduced themselves and talked about their respective backgrounds and interests, and then, over the span of an hour, Hall blew Antal's mind. Yes, he said, he was planning an elaborate, 20,000-person community that would extend over four small towns, including hers, and the blueprint was based on the so-called Plat of the City of Zion, a Mormon document depicting a vision that Joseph Smith and two colleagues jotted down in 1833. And while that all sounded a bit far-fetched, Hall revealed that he already had more than 150 engineers working on technology and architecture for the project. "One hundred and fifty engineers!" says Antal. "Before then, it was all just conceptual. All of the sudden it seemed like, oh my God, this is going to happen tomorrow."

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