Editor’s note: This is the first story in a four-part series diving into the facts behind one fundamentalist Mormon group’s presence, and aftermath of another, the southern Black Hills of South Dakota. KELOLAND News Digital Reporter Jacob Newton has sifted through property records, court records and interviewed multiple sources about the group known as the Order. This series explores the history and secrecy of the compound and the lasting impressions that linger today.
SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) — A compound in rural Custer County, about nine miles southwest of the small town of Pringle, blends into the landscape just like other properties in the southern Black Hills.
But behind the natural beauty of the Black Hills, a compound near the small town of just over 100 people has become better known as the location for stories like this one. Stories about polygamy; about faulty recordkeeping; about allegations of abuse.
Rather than being known for W.H. Pringle – the cattleman for whom the town had been named – it became associated with another surname: Jeffs.
The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) is gone from the state in any organized capacity. Now, only a fractured group with remnants in different parts of the country remains after being led for many years by its prophet – Warren Jeffs. Jeffs is now serving a life sentence in a Texas prison for sexual assault on a child.
Now that the Jeffs no longer own and operate the Custer County compound, an investigation by KELOLAND News Digital Reporter Jacob Newton has uncovered evidence of ties between SDR Training Center and an entirely different fundamentalist Mormon group, separate from the legacy of the FLDS and Jeffs.
This group is known as the Order – aka the Kingston Order, the Kingston Group, the Davis County Cooperative Society (DCCS) or the Latter Day Church of Jesus Christ (LDCJC), and while they are not affiliated with the FLDS, their story may sound familiar.
The Order is a fundamentalist Mormon group which has engaged in polygamy, incest, child abuse, child labor violations and fraud, according to the Associated Press. The Order appears to be present in South Dakota, with activity being noted at the compound in 2023 and 2024.
It is not currently known why the Order purchased the compound in the Hills. Buildings at the property have recently been posted as available for rent on Airbnb.
In 2025, a child care program – a family day care with capacity for 12 children – was registered with the South Dakota Department of Social Services at the address of the former FLDS compound.
KELOLAND News contacted the number listed on the program profile, and was told that all child care slots are currently full.
Jeffs family history in South Dakota
Two of Warren Jeffs’ brothers, Lyle and Seth Jeffs, had more direct ties to South Dakota, as they were captured by authorities here on fraud charges.
KELOLAND News first reported on the compound back in 2006, sending a crew to the area, who was unable to approach the compound. Concern from locals in the area centered around the construction noise produced by the group and the secrecy with which they operated.
In 2015, still more questions were raised when members of the group requested and received a state permit to increase water usage on the site.
In 2017, Lyle Jeffs, wanted for charges of defrauding the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), was arrested by the FBI in Yankton. He was sentenced to prison in 2017 and released in 2021. Seth Jeffs was also arrested in connection with SNAP fraud. At the time of his arrest, he was traveling on the highway near the compound in a vehicle with several women. At that time, he was the active leader of the compound.
A judge’s ruling in 2018 further explained the matter, confirming that children had indeed been born on the compound, despite an absolute lack of birth certificates being issued.
Tim Goodwin, a longtime South Dakota lawmaker and current Republican Rep. from Rapid City, spoke to KELOLAND News about his concerns about the group over the years.
“I used to get letters from Warren Jeffs,” Goodwin told KELOLAND News in 2022. “From the penitentiary in Texas. You didn’t even want to read them because it was signed by ‘Jesus Christ.’ He was telling me that he was a prophet of God — it was so much blasphemy that you thought you were going to go to hell just reading it.”
Goodwin also had dark suspicions about the compound itself, sharing what he said was told to him by Roy Jeffs, a son of Warren who had left the group as an adult.
The FLDS presence at the compound ended when it defaulted on its $1.6 million loan, which KELOLAND reported on in January of 2021.
The property was foreclosed on, and in 2021 it was sold to three men – Andrew Chatwin, Patrick Pipkin and Claude Seth Cooke – represented as Blue Mountain Ranch LLC, at a sheriff’s auction for $750,000.
Chatwin, Pipkin and Cooke, won a $2 million judgment against the FLDS. In 2021, Pipkin told the Rapid City Journal that he had left the FLDS 15-years prior. After purchasing the compound in 2021, they listed the property in 2022, asking $6.9 million for the 77 bedroom, 74 bathroom property.
The property was under contract for a sale in May of 2023. The property had been sold as of a few weeks later to a group called SDR Training Center. SDR Training Center was listed at the time as a nonprofit church with the South Dakota Secretary of State.
In May of 2023, KELOLAND News learned the property was under contract. A few weeks later, we found that it had been sold, securing paperwork outlining the sale of the property to a group called SDR Training Center, listed as a nonprofit church in business records with the state.
What is the Order?
What exactly is this group? A cult? A business? A church? Former members KELOLAND spoke to have described it as each of these things.
These are all variations of things that those who KELOLAND News has interviewed in the course of this investigation has called the Order. These sources include former members of the group, a former investigator with the state of Utah and an academic with a focus on fundamentalist groups.
Cristina Rosetti, an assistant professor of humanities at Utah Tech, has a PhD in religious studies and has done extensive research into the lived experience and history of Mormon fundamentalism in the Intermountain West region of the United States.
“[The Order] is part of the wider Mormon fundamentalist movement,” Rosetti told KELOLAND News. “When people imagine Mormon fundamentalism, they often imagine the FLDS, but fundamentalism is an umbrella term for any group or independent family that continues to practice the principle of plural marriage.”
There are hundreds of Mormon fundamentalist religions in the U.S., according to Rosetti, but she says that The Order is one of the larger groups.
The Order differs from what would be considered more mainstream Latter Day Saints congregations in that it still practices polygamy, Rosetti said.
“Most Mormon fundamentalist groups are the result of a schism that occurred in the 1950s that resulted in the FLDS and the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB – another fundamentalist group),” Rosetti said. “The [Order] is unique for its size in that it didn’t break off from either of those in any kind of substantive way. It’s been really its own thing from its earliest years.”
The Order also has its roots with a man named Charles Kingston, Rosetti explained. He was a member of the Mormon church, and was later excommunicated for his polygamous beliefs in 1928, according to the Davis County Cooperative Society.
Rosetti explained by the time Brigham Young became the leader of the LDS church, polygamy was a requirement.
“That’s definitely downplayed now in the LDS church, but Brigham Young literally said that you will not become God – ‘yea, even the son of God’ – without entering into the principle of plural marriage,” she explained.
Polygamy was a requirement to reach heaven, said Rosetti, but in the 1890s, the LDS changed its mind.
Rosetti said Kingston was sure the LDS had gone astray and his son, Elden Kingston, became the leader of what would become the Kingstons.
This excommunication, and Kingston’s religious conviction, was set along the backdrop of the Great Depression and the Kingston family would grow to become today’s Order that now occupies land in the southern Black Hills.
Part 2 of this series will examine the SDR Training Center, the company tied to the Order that has bought the former FLDS compound in the Black Hills.
