Park City & Heber Valley: Utah's Mountain Town Heritage

Park City, 35 minutes from Salt Lake City through Parley's Canyon, was a silver mining boomtown in the 1870s that went bankrupt in the 1950s, was saved by ski tourism in the 1960s, and is now the wealthiest small town in Utah. The 19th-century commercial district on Main Street (a dozen blocks of brick storefronts from the silver era) is the best-preserved mining town main street in the Mountain West, and the Utah Olympic Park from the 2002 Winter Olympics is 3 miles north of town. The Heber Valley beyond the Wasatch Back, another 20 minutes south, runs through traditional Mormon agricultural settlement; the historic Heber Creeper steam railway offers valley views across the rural landscape that has barely changed since the 1890s.