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ike Napa Valley wines or the plays of Stephen Sondheim, it’s been a long |
time since Park City was any kind of a secret.
After all, Park City was the home of the internationally famous Sundance Film Festival for 17 years before the worldwide spotlight that was the 2002 Olympics was turned on mountains in and around Park City! And real estate has been steadily going up in Wasatch County for more than three decades as word about the city has spread.
It’s easy to see what people talk about. Any direction you look the area is just so darn picturesque. The city is set among steep, green-forested mountains. And chi-chi shops and restaurants… many of them housed in historic buildings… vie for your attention up and down the near-vertical Main Street.
It gets better. No mountain resort town anywhere in North America is closer to an international airport than Park City. Park City is just 36 miles from Salt Lake International Airport. You can literally leave the office in Manhattan or Dallas, take a direct flight and be skiing or golfing before the day is through. Don’t try that at Aspen!
But that 36 miles… along with the Wasatch Range massif… separates Park City from Salt Lake City not just physically but culturally. Park City was one of only a handful of cities in Utah not founded by the Mormons. The Park City Restaurant Association cheekily advertises the culinary treasures there to Salt Lake residents as the “Republic of Park City.” And people along the Wasatch Front commonly consider Park City to be part California, part Colorado and yet somehow all Utah.
No wonder… then…that you’re likely to spot so many Hollywood types shopping or dining with the hoi polloi in Park City. Chances are Park City is their second home, too!
It didn’t start out that way. Originally all of Park City’s charms were inside the mountains, not on them.
Over the years some $400 million in silver, gold and lead was removed from mines in and around Park City, creating 18 silver baron millionaires, among them the father of the famed newspaperman William Randolph Hearst. Then beginning in the 1940s, as the silver played out, Park City entered its ‘quaint’ phase. In the 1960s it was as likely to be the home of hippies as miners.
In 1963 when the first Park City ski resort opened, called Treasure Mountain, skiers started the lift to the top of the mountain with a journey into the mountain via a mine train before being lifted 1800 feet to the top of the mountain on a mine hoist elevator! Those were the days of blue collar skiing. That was then.
Nowadays Park City and its three resorts… Deer Valley Resort, Park City Mountain Resort, and The Canyons… host 1.7 million skier-days and boarders there for the “Greatest Snow on Earth” each winter. Every January brings the renowned Sundance Film Festival to Park City. The summers are spent mountain biking, fishing and water sports, golfing at six public and six private courses, attending concerts and gallery showings and shopping.
The rest of the year city fathers and mothers manage their press clippings and accolades.
- Park City Mountain Resort was ranked 4th best resort by TransWorld Snowboarding, and its terrain park ranked #1 in 2006. The terrain park also ranked #1 in 2007.
- Deer Valley ranked #2 overall resort in North America by Ski Magazine in 2006. Ski Magazine also ranked Deer Valley #1 for service. In 2005 it was ranked #1.
- Two years in a row, 2005 and 2006, Ski Magazine ranked Park City Mountain Resort as the #5 overall as well as a #2 ranking for access.
- The Canyons was 14th overall in 2005 and 15th in 2006.
- For 2007, two Park City restaurants received AAA’s Four Diamond rating: Goldener Hirsch Restaurant and The Glitretind in Park City.
- Stein Erickson Lodge in Park City was named to the 2006 Five Diamond property list by AAA.
- Four diamond award winners include the Hotel Park City and The Silver King.
What’s to do in Park City? Each of the resorts offers something different to visitors. Imagine gliding down long cruising runs of corduroy groomed slopes, conquering steep chutes and powder-filled bowls, even radical half pipes and terrain parks are available to riders. Both The Canyons and Park City Mountain Resort offer skiing and snowboarding, while Deer Valley Resort caters strictly to skiers.
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Enjoy a “Sunrise Adventure” hot air balloon ride over Park City |
Throughout the winter, Park City is home to prestigious snow-sport events including frequent World Cup stops. Park City hosted one-third of the events for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games which yielded the greatest harvest of Gold, Silver and Bronze medals for the American team ever. All of the Olympics’ venues are still in |
place and many welcome even the most amateur of athletes during both winter and summer seasons.
One of the most exciting is the Utah Olympic Park Built for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games, the Olympic Park is home to one of the few recreational Nordic ski jumping facilities in the U.S. open to the public. The Olympic bobsled and luge track… the fastest in the world… is open to the public for a once-in-a-lifetime, white-knuckle, 54-second, 75 m.p.h. bobsled ride.
Every January Park City opens its doors to mysterious people cloaked in black. They’re not Goths (usually). Instead they’re independent film and dealmakers trying to grab their share of critical acclaim and/or box office gold at Robert Redford’s renowned Sundance Film Festival. Many of the films are made to be and remain small after showing there. But every year at least a handful of films, seen first at Sundance, make their way to the neighborhood megaplex. See them first at Sundance.
After the snow melts Park City turns into the Emerald City and attracts legions of sun lovers. The area’s three mountain resorts offer thousands of acres of terrain that is open to the public for hiking, biking, picnicking, or just relaxing. Park City’s year-round residents are an outdoorsy bunch who have created more than 325 miles of expert and family-friendly trails. Mountain bikers can ride from May through September. Ski lifts operate during the summer months carrying mountain bikers and bikes up to exciting and scenic paths. The town’s trail system offers single- and double-track trails marked according to skill level. Summer brings to town even more events, including the Park City Arts Festival, a NORBA-sanctioned mountain bike race, the International Music Festival, and an International Jazz Festival. The Utah Symphony makes a summer home
in Park City.
Imagine you’re John Daley and can crush a monster drive off the tee. In Park City you don’t have to imagine. Because of the high altitude, golf balls fly quite a bit further there. They call it “ego golfing,” and for everyone that’s not already John Daley there’s nothing like a 275-plus yard drive at one of the many courses in Park City. And those courses come with storied pedigrees. Park City boasts courses by designers Pete Dye, Tom Fazio, Jack Nicklaus, 2004 Architect of the Year, Gene Bates, and Masters Champion Mark O’Meara. More blue-chip courses are slated for construction within the next few years. No wonder that many visitors are finding out that one of the nation’s premier ski destinations is in fact a golfer’s Valhalla, too.
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Used to be Park City was for miners with its 20 plus saloons lustily lining Main Street. Now Park City is also for minors. There’s the twisty turns of the perennially popular Alpine Slide, Summer Adventure Camp at Deer Valley, chuckwagon rides, hot air ballooning and horse rides. But to come to Park City without checking out Utah Olympic Park, where Olympic athletes train year-round is a near travesty. Visitors can sample what it’s like to be a luge or skeleton athlete riding the “Quicksilver” alpine slide, a European-style alpine slide and the first of its kind in North America. Its state-of-the-art steel track allows riders to weave down a narrow course on an open speed-controlled sled. Olympic Park also offers the Xtreme Zip… the world’s steepest… which jets along at 50 miles per hour along the 120 meter ski jump hill, or for a milder ride, the Ultra Zip travels along the winter freestyle hill. For the daring, three-man summer bobsled rides are available on “The Comet” which accelerates to 70 miles per hour and pulls 4 G’s of force—an equivalent of a 40-story drop—piloted by an experienced driver, down the entire length of the Olympic bobsled track. It’s over in a minute, but your kids will never forget the thrill. And every Saturday in the summer months Olympic freestyle hopefuls and national ski and snowboard team members delight and amaze audiences with choreographed stunts and high-flying acrobatics.
With its clean, clear, dry air and sparkling blue skies just visiting Park City is therapeutic. But if you want to take it to the next level, Park City offers more than a dozen luxury and day spas, including specialty treatments for your canine companions and golfers.
Park City also offers ‘retail therapy’ in abundance. From the charming shops and galleries lining Main Street to the branded bargains at the factory outlet mall, Park City offers something for everyone.
And when you come, bring your appetite to Park City. There’s more than 100 restaurants and bars to choose from and every kind of cuisine imaginable. And Park City attracts many of world’s finest chefs and restaurateurs. Chef Bill Hufferd’s Riverhorse on Main became the first restaurant in Utah to earn the coveted DiRoNA award dedicated to “excellence in dining.” Ten area restaurants including Bangkok Thai, The Glitretind and 350 Main have been awarded the Wine Spectator Award of Excellence. Bill White’s French-Asian restaurant, Wahso, was rated one of the top ten restaurants “in the World” by Fodors Travel. |
