Utah
Photographs by Joel Sartore
Text by Donovan Webster
"Utah feels like the perfect place to be." To the east, in the day’s last sun, the snowcapped Wasatch Range rises to 11,750 feet. The skyscrapers of Salt Lake City are back-dropped by glowing rock and snow. A near-empty ribbon of interstate points to the city’s gleam like the road to Oz. There is no smog. No scrambling sense of crowds. Other American cities may have runaway crime, pricey housing, and snarled traffic, but in Salt Lake all that seems far away.
About two hours south of Salt Lake City, in a valley of the lonely Gilson Mountains, a shepherd named Enrico—driven from this native Peru by civil unrest—enjoys a life that the valleys of Utah helped reclaim. As he smiles and stares across the valley dotted with livestock, he says that Utah may be his promised land, as it has been for so many others. "Back home," he says, "when people hear of my life in this place, they can only think I am a millionaire."
Soon, the critics say, Utah will be as crowded as everywhere else in America. They may be right. But, says one resident, "maybe in Utah, where society has yet to slip into an unworkable mire, we can take advantage of the clean slate." This is not the first time such thoughts have been pinned to Utah.
NGM 1996/01