Salt Lake City: Canyon Skiing, Sphinx Gardens and a Lake of Buffalo
Ski Brighton in the protected Big Cottonwood watershed, shop the Pioneer Park Farmers Market at the city founding ground, seek out the sphinx-faced Joseph Smith at Gilgal Garden, ride the award-winning TRAX light rail, cross the causeway to bison-roaming Antelope Island, and walk the Victorian Avenues above downtown.
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Big Cottonwood Canyon and Brighton Ski Resort
Big Cottonwood Canyon, rising steeply from the Salt Lake Valley 15 miles southeast of downtown, is one of two protected watershed canyons that supply drinking water to Salt Lake City and prohibited motorized recreational vehicles until recent exceptions for electric bikes. Brighton Ski Resort at the top of the canyon, founded in 1936, is the oldest continually operating ski resort in Utah. Its 1,050 acres of terrain rises to 10,500 feet. Big Cottonwood is also famous for Millcent ski area next to Brighton, together creating one of the highest concentration of ski terrain per canyon mile in the world. The canyon road closes to public vehicles beyond the S-curve in winter to protect the watershed, making the resorts accessible only by canyon shuttle from the park-and-ride at the base.
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Pioneer Park and Homeless Services District
Pioneer Park in downtown Salt Lake City, a city block between 300 and 400 South and 300 and 400 West, was the site where Brigham Young and the first pioneer company arrived on July 24, 1847, making it the symbolic founding ground of the city. The park hosts the Downtown Farmers Market from June through October, one of the most successful urban farmers markets in the Mountain West with over 150 vendors. Pioneer Park has also been the center of Salt Lake City homelessness policy debates since the closing of the Road Home shelter in 2019 and the attempted implementation of a distributed resource center model. The city efforts to balance the park public use with services for the unhoused represent a challenge common to growing western American cities.
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Gilgal Sculpture Garden
Gilgal Sculpture Garden, a half-acre private garden created by Thomas Battersby Child Jr. between 1945 and 1963 and donated to Salt Lake City in 2000, contains 12 original stone sculptures and 75 engraved stones reflecting Child personal theological interpretations of Latter-day Saint doctrine. The centerpiece is a sphinx with the face of Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS Church, carved in granite. Other sculptures include a biblical reference tableau and self-portrait of Child dressed as a freemason. The garden is open daily and free of charge. It is one of the most unusual folk art environments in the American West and has been called the most unusual public park in Utah. The garden sits in a residential neighborhood off 500 East and 900 South, unmarked from the street.
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TRAX Light Rail and Urban Mobility
Salt Lake City TRAX light rail system, opened in 1999 with a 15-mile Blue Line from the Delta Center to Sandy, has expanded to 45 miles of track serving the Salt Lake Valley and connecting to the airport. The airport line, opened in 2013, provides one of the most convenient urban rail airport connections in the American West. The FrontRunner commuter rail line extends 88 miles from Provo to Ogden through the Salt Lake Valley, one of the longest commuter rail lines in the western United States. Utah Transit Authority operates the system across a region that was almost entirely automobile-dependent when TRAX opened. Ridership reached 20 million annual trips before the pandemic and has partially recovered. The system is frequently cited as a model of suburban transit planning for other western cities.
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Antelope Island State Park
Antelope Island State Park, connected to the mainland by a 7.5-mile causeway across the Great Salt Lake, covers 42,000 acres and is the largest island in the lake. The island holds a free-roaming bison herd of 600 animals, descendants of 12 bison brought from Montana in 1893 in one of the earliest bison conservation efforts in American history. Annual roundups in November manage herd size and health. The island also supports mule deer, pronghorn antelope, coyotes, and an abundance of migratory birds using the lake shores. Swimming in the lake from the island beach is possible; the extremely high salinity of 5 to 27 percent, compared to 3.5 percent for ocean water, makes bathers highly buoyant. The island Fielding Garr Ranch, established in 1848, is the oldest continuously operated ranch in Utah.
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Wheeler Historic District and Avenues Neighborhood
The Avenues neighborhood, a residential grid of streets designated by letters and numbers rising steeply up the foothills north of downtown Salt Lake City, contains the most intact collection of late Victorian and early 20th century housing in Utah. Streets from A to Virginia Street and 1st to 18th Avenue encompass roughly 5,000 houses built between 1880 and 1930 in Queen Anne, Craftsman, Colonial Revival, and Mission styles. The neighborhood has been a National Register Historic District since 1979. Memory Grove Park at the southern end of the Avenues connects through City Creek Canyon to Bonneville Shoreline Trail, a 280-mile ridgeline trail running along the ancient Lake Bonneville shoreline visible as a distinct terrace across the entire east face of the Wasatch Front.