The world map from the old Salt Lake City airport found its final destination. Travelers will see it this fall.

Salt Lake City International Airport has saved the world.

The world map, that is.

The artwork was installed in Terminal 1 of the old Salt Lake City airport in 1961, delighting travelers for decades before its removal in 2020, when the new airport opened its doors.

Now, the terrazzo map, which illustrates United Airlines flight paths from the airport in 1959, has been dusted off after years in storage and relocated to the concourse B plaza of the new airport, which, along with the new Central Tunnel, is scheduled to open Oct. 22.

“This is something we wanted everybody to see when they came here, and a lot of folks as they were leaving,” said Chandler McClellan, a project manager. “Whether either missionaries, business people, folks going off to war, whatever — this is what they saw as they were leaving the city. We wanted it to be back when they come home. We wanted it to be there for them.”

Engineers initially thought the installation — which measures about 36 feet in diameter — could not be moved without damage to the art. Project officials pulled it off by splitting the map into 75 pieces, each one measuring about four feet long by four feet wide and weighing 400 pounds. The whole process carried a $250,000 price tag.

After its extraction from the old airport, the map sat in pieces in an airfield storage building. Putting the pieces back together was like constructing a massive puzzle, said IMS Masonry project manager John Kunz.

The terrazzo slabs, however, were certainly more precious than the average cardboard puzzle piece, which meant crews were left to solve important math problems during transport. Engineers had to calculate the number of pieces they would place on each pallet while also keeping in mind the maximum weight the freight elevator could support.

“We had to really think through our process, take things slow, have a slow approach to it,” Kunz said. “By handling it like marble or granite, we knew that we could handle the product.”

With the world map’s 2,000-foot journey from its original location within the old airport complete, engineers are now looking forward to the installation’s reunion with travelers on their way to destinations around the globe.

“When I thought about all the planning and logistics that would have to go into it, I said, ‘We can make this map and replicate it exactly,’” project manager Jake Bingham said.

But a replica, Bingham said, wouldn’t do.

“They were persistent that they wanted to have this piece,” he said, “because it was something that the public really had a tie to … I’m glad they pushed forward and we went this route.”