I grew up in a Park City drastically different from today’s iteration. For one thing, people didn’t gawk in surprise when they met someone from Park City. A person’s trail of provenance was far less apparent then. If you were here, you were simply a member of this weird, lovable community of ski bums, waiters, realtors or, more likely, a combination of all three.
My memory could be skewed by the rosy lens of childhood, but small businesses seemed to thrive when I was a kid, and nowhere more so than on Main Street. We’d go to Main Street because it was the community’s beating heart. Today, its many fine art galleries, high-end restaurants and shops represent something far different. Main Street is like a relative whose personality has changed subtly year by year. Aside from sharing occasional obligatory holiday meals, there’s little left to relate to. I feel nostalgic for a time when visiting Main Street felt less like class warfare and more like a village gathering.
As a father, I have plenty of opportunities to chat with parents at playgrounds or child-focused functions, and when I reveal that I grew up here, a predictable pattern of conversation follows: “Was it such an amazing place to grow up in?” “How has it changed?”
I’m typically as honest as possible. “Yes, it was an amazing place to grow up in,” I say. “But almost everyone I grew up with has moved away.” And it’s true. Many who’ve stuck around have moved to Salt Lake, Francis, Peoa, Heber, Wanship — anywhere they don’t have to compete with the buying power of multi-millionaires looking to add a Park City vacation home to their financial portfolio.
I’ll also tell them how abundant open space used to be, how the trail we used to take as teenagers to the top of Iron Mountain — where we’d howl at the full moon just because we could — has been amputated at the elbow by newly built mansions and “no trespassing” signs.
I don’t tell them that what we really had growing up was middle-class and working-class populations living in the same zip codes. Their kids went to school together, became friends, married each other and went on to have their own kids. But today, much of that housing that was so vital to Park City’s workforce is now being listed as “chic,” “cozy” and “charming” rentals that cost $400-a-night.
Growing up, when I’d see a moose walking down the street, the collective response was always, “How lucky are we to be able to live this close to nature.” Today, when I see a moose navigating the busy streets of Park City, I offer it a silent apology for the loss of undeveloped land it desperately hopes to find beneath its feet, because I want to find that, too.
For the locals who have stayed and thrived from my youth until today, they’ve often done so at a cost. Many of those scrappy realtors who figured out how to make a living while skiing 50 days a season from the 1980s until today have made millions, but they’ve done so by selling the soul of a town piece by piece.
Anyone living off the fat of Park City’s constant-growth ecosystem might reply with, “That’s showbiz, baby.” And they’d be right. But what does a town lose when it puts profits above community?
For those newly relocated families and residents, there’s bliss in the ignorance that they’ll never know the warmth of a community that looks after its own. Today, every address seems to be an island that exists independently of its neighbor. Long gone are the days of borrowing eggs and sugar and leaving your kids with the elderly couple next door. It’s a poverty of wealth.
For my part, I’m back here to make a documentary film about Great Salt Lake and those doing everything they can to save it. To live in Park City and briefly raise my son in the place where I grew up has felt like a dream, but it’s time to wake up. Winter is coming, and our lease is ending as our rental property makes way for tourists to come worship at the altar of overpriced ski vacations.
I can’t say that I hold out much hope that Park City will return to a version of the community I grew up in. Maybe, if the workforce is pushed so far out of town that no one is left to run it, people will be forced to open their doors once again. Then, perhaps the beautiful homes that sit empty nine months out of the year will fill with people living their lives and growing old within them.
(Fletcher Keyes) Fletcher Keyes is a documentary filmmaker and former reporter.
Fletcher Keyes is a documentary filmmaker and former reporter. His past work has covered police shootings in Utah, the drought and energy around the world. His current project is a feature documentary about the potential disappearance of Great Salt Lake and the fight to save it.
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