Utah has an incomparable terrain of dramatic visual contrasts, sculpted by water and wind over millions of years, and the largest concentration of national parks in the country. Much of Utah experiences a high altitude desert climate with very little rain.

Named for the Ute Native American tribe, Utah is split by the Wasatch Range, which cuts a vertical swath through the middle. These lofty peaks are a haven for mountain lions, mule deer, moose, and elk. In the winter months, the snowy slopes are dotted with skiers. The Colorado Plateau, stretching across the southeast corner, remains largely uninhabited. Its red-rock canyons and sagebrush flats are the pattern for most of Utah’s wilderness corridor, a backyard of recreational delights for outdoor enthusiasts. Slicing directly through the plateau are the Colorado and Green Rivers, part of a landscape of eroded pinnacles, ancient arches, and narrow gorges.

Nestled in the northwestern desert basin is the state capital, Salt Lake City. It was here, in 1847, that Mormon leader Brigham Young led his persecuted band of religious pioneers to the region he named “Deseret” — a word from The Book of Mormon which means “honeybee.” Before the arrival of Spanish Franciscan friars in the seventeenth century, Utah was largely home to the Ute, Shoshone, and Paiute Native Americans. When the Mormons colonized the Great Salt Lake area, they turned the arid terrain into fertile farming land. In the 1870s an influx of new settlers arrived with the railroad, drawn by the gold and silver strikes in Utah’s mountains.

The discovery of oil, copper, silver, and uranium in the early twentieth century brought the state greater prosperity, and later, discord between environmentalists and federal agencies.