Park City & Sundance: The Olympic Legacy, Robert Redford's Mountain, and Heber Valley Steam

Built on the western flank of the Wasatch Range above Park City for the 2002 Winter Games, this 400-acre complex remains the only fully operational Olympic venue in the United States where visitors can ride the actual competition bobsled track. The park includes the original Nordic combined jump towers (the tallest at 90 meters), the skeleton and luge runs, and the Alf Engen Ski Museum — a thorough treatment of Utah skiing history from Norwegian immigrant Alf Engen's 1940s ski school at Alta through the generations of powder skiing that built the Wasatch's global reputation. Summer brings aerial ski training over a splash pool and the most visceral bobsled ride available to the public: 80 mph in 55 seconds.

The 1885 city jail at 528 Main Street, with its original iron holding cells intact, anchors this free museum of the silver-mining boomtown that exported $400 million in ore during its peak decades. The exhibits document the 1868 silver strike, the ethnic diversity of the mining workforce (Welsh, Irish, Finnish, and Cornish miners lived in segregated boardinghouses on the hillsides), the 1898 fire, the rebuilding in brick, and the town's long survival through the ski era into the Olympic transformation.

Seven blocks of intact Victorian commercial architecture on the National Register of Historic Places, with the Town Lift gondola terminal at the top connecting the historic district to the ski mountain — one of the rare urban environments in America where a Victorian main street and a world-class ski resort share a single address. The Egyptian Theatre (1926), the Wasatch Brew Pub in the 1903 Rocky Mountain Power building, and dozens of intact storefronts trace a century of boom, bust, and revival.

Utah's first post-Prohibition legal distillery operates from an 1896 livery stable on Park City's Main Street, pouring its western appellation whiskeys — Rendezvous Rye, American Prairie Bourbon, the Campfire blend of Scotch, rye, and bourbon — in a saloon setting of stone walls, cast-iron stove, and antler chandeliers. The distillery pioneered the concept of western appellation whiskey: spirits finished in barrels that impart the flavors specific to the high-altitude, low-humidity Wasatch environment.

Robert Redford purchased 5,000 acres on the north fork of Provo Canyon in 1969 with the intention of building a resort that would integrate art, nature, and community rather than maximize commercial yield. The result is the Sundance Institute, the Sundance Film Festival, and a mountain resort with just 3,000 beds — deliberately kept small. The Art Shack studios are open daily in summer, with resident artists working in ceramics, weaving, and printmaking; visitors can watch or take workshops alongside the artists.

A 4-mile round-trip trail from the Sundance property climbs through mixed aspen and fir forest to Stewart Falls, a twin waterfall on the flanks of Mount Timpanogos that drops 200 feet in two curtains over ancient quartzite. The trail is one of the finest moderate hikes in the Wasatch Front, gaining 800 feet with consistent views up the canyon toward Timpanogos's 11,752-foot summit.

The Heber Valley Historic Railroad operates vintage steam and diesel locomotives on the original 1899 Denver and Rio Grande Western line through Heber Valley and Provo Canyon, a 16-mile round trip through some of the most scenic agricultural land in Utah. The steam locomotive — a 1907 Baldwin 2-8-0 Consolidation — pulls open-air and enclosed coaches past the Wasatch Back ranches, through the canyon cut above Deer Creek Reservoir, and into the Provo River gorge. The railroad is the living artifact of the agricultural economy that Heber City's Swiss-descended dairy farmers built in the valley below the ski resorts.

Midway was settled in the 1860s by Swiss immigrants who recognized the alpine meadows and limestone spring landscape as reminiscent of home; the town still holds a Swiss Days festival in September and maintains Swiss-themed architecture in its historic commercial block. The Homestead Crater — a 55-foot-tall geothermal hot spring dome 10,000 years in the making — sits on the Homestead Resort property just off Main Street; visitors can snorkel in the 90°F water inside the volcanic-tufa dome.

A 25-year institution in Heber City's historic district, the Snake Creek Grill serves American comfort food elevated with Wasatch mountain ingredients: bison short ribs, Utah trout, house-smoked meats, and seasonal vegetable sides from Wasatch Back farms. The dining room occupies a converted historic storefront with a serious whiskey bar.