According to the 2014 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life survey, roughly 5% of Arizonans self-identify most closely with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The next time Latter-day Saints entered the area was in 1858 and 1859, when Jacob Hamblin and his companions camped at Pipe Spring in the northwestern part of present-day Arizona.

Also during this period, isolated ranches and small Mormon settlements were established at Short Creek (now Colorado City), Pipe Spring, Beaver Dam and neighboring Littlefield, and Lee's Ferry, all in the area between the Utah border and the Grand Canyon known as the Arizona Strip.

The first effort at large-scale LDS colonization came in March 1873 when a group of Latter-day Saints was sent from Utah to the Little Colorado River drainage under the direction of Horton D. Height.

The colonizers turned back, discouraged by the poor prospects, but a few returned the following year and began farming among the Native Americans at Moencopi.

A year later, James S. Brown led another small colonizing group that successfully settled at Moencopi, then began exploring the surrounding area.

[5][6] Daniel W. Jones was commissioned by Brigham Young to start a Mormon colony within the Salt River Valley of the Arizona Territory.

Jones' invitation to local Native Americans to live with them became a point of controversy, and half of the initial colony left, moving on to found St. David, Arizona.