Salt Lake City, UT
Salt Lake City grew up as a Mormon pioneer town. In the mid-1800s, a group of Mormons grew weary of religious persecution in the Midwest. They loaded up their wagons and headed West in hopes of finding a place to re-settle. When they came to the beautiful Salt Lake Valley in present-day Utah, Mormon leader Brigham Young decided they had reached their destination. He founded Salt Lake City in 1847 and quickly established it as the new headquarters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (also known as LDS or the Mormon Church). Thousands of Mormons soon followed along what became known as the Mormon Trail from Nauvoo, Illinois to Salt Lake City.
Mormon leaders organized the town in a grid system, with streets running almost exactly north-south and east-west. They built the Salt Lake Temple in the center of town and the site became the focal point for all addresses in the valley. For example, “900 East Street” is the road that is nine blocks east of the Temple and “1500 South Street” is the address that is 15 blocks south of the Temple.
Over the years, Salt Lake City began to attract more than just church-goers. The Transcontinental Railroad, which passed just north of town at Promontory Summit by 1869, brought a number of railroad workers to the area. Mining also became a prosperous industry. Eventually the city drew a large minority population. Today, members of the LDS church account for only about half of the population in Salt Lake City (although Mormons still comprise almost two thirds of the population of Utah as a whole).
Geography
Salt Lake City (SLC) is the capital of Utah. Bounded on three sides by mountain ranges and on the fourth by the Great Salt Lake, SLC is shielded from much of the severe winter weather typical of the area. In the east, the towering Wasatch Mountain Range reaches elevations of 11,500 feet above sea level. In the west, the Oquirrh Mountains rise to 9,500 feet above sea level. Eighty-five percent of Utahans live along the base of the Wasatch Mountains. The Wasatch Mountains sit atop an earthquake fault line, which experts consider long overdue for a major earthquake.
The city is 109 square miles and sits at an elevation of 4,330 feet. It follows the Mountain Time Zone.
Weather
Salt Lake City has an arid climate with hot summers and long winters. Annual precipitation is less than 16 inches and the city enjoys 125 clear days every year.
The winters bring with them a lot of snow. Salt Lake City receives an average of 58 inches of snowfall every year. This is because the Salt Lake produces “lake effect snow” and also because of the city’s position in the middle of the Rockies (some nearby mountain ranges accumulate more than 500 inches of snow in a season). Cold fronts sometimes blow in from the Gulf of Alaska, but the city endures below-zero temperatures only a few days each year.
The summers are hot and dry. The average July high is 91 °F. The average July precipitation is less than one inch.
Population
Salt Lake City has a population of just over 180,000 people, but the three-county metropolitan region has more than 1 million residents, and is the most populous region in the state. This makes the Salt Lake City metropolitan area a natural focal point of Utah with almost half of the state’s more than 2.8 million residents.
The city itself is not growing. In fact, Salt Lake City’s population has declined since 2000. However, the suburbs are expanding quickly, and Utah is one of the fastest growing states in the nation, reaching a population of 2.8 million this year. Salt Lake County’s population is expected to reach about 1.5 million by 2030 and Utah itself expects to have almost 4.4 million residents by then.
Salt Lake Citians can spread out, with a population density of only 1,666 people per square mile. That is even less than the densities of Helena, Montana or Cheyenne, Wyoming, and less than half the density of Denver, Colorado. Utah in general has a population density of only 32 people per square mile, while the density of the United States as a whole is 86.2 people per square mile.
Demographics
The face of Salt Lake City has diversified since its Mormon beginnings. Ironically, it is the LDS community that is largely responsible for making Salt Lake City less LDS. Mormons have a long-standing outreach philosophy and they encourage adherents to have large families. This is especially attractive to Hispanics, many of whom migrate to Salt Lake from other parts of the United States. Utah offers such immigrant attractions such as “driving privilege cards,” which allow undocumented immigrants to drive, and in-state tuition for long-term undocumented immigrant students.
Hispanics now account for 22 percent of Salt Lake City’s population. One is more likely to hear Spanish than English in the Rose Park and Glendale neighborhoods of the city, where 60 percent of schoolchildren are Hispanic. Hispanics are bringing with them more than just the Spanish language. Mexican President Vicente Fox visited here in 2006 and the Mexican supermarket chain Supermercados Gigante is planning to open its first US store outside of California in Salt Lake City.
Twenty-nine percent of Salt Lake Citians were born abroad, but 50 percent of Salt Lake City’s residents were born in Utah. Twenty-nine percent of SLC residents speak a language other than English at home; 60 percent of those foreign-language speakers speak Spanish. In Salt Lake County, 19 percent of the population speaks a foreign language at home, with about two-thirds speaking Spanish. And only 12 percent of the greater metropolitan area’s population was born abroad. Sixteen percent of the metropolitan population is Hispanic, 3 percent is Asian and only 1 percent is African American. Salt Lake City has a higher proportion of Hispanic residents (22 percent), although 66 percent of its residents are White non-Hispanic.
Another interesting local demographic trend is the large gay community. Salt Lake City’s reputation as a gay-friendly community is somewhat at odds with the state’s reputation as staunchly conservative and religious. (Seventy-five percent of Utahans affiliate with a religion, and 72 percent of voters are registered Republicans.) However, the gay community has reaped the benefits of a few effective advocates, such as former mayor Rocky Anderson. In the early 2000s, Anderson signed executive orders expanding the rights of domestic partners and banning discrimination of municipal employees on the basis of sexual orientation. Today, Salt Lake’s prominent gay community includes leaders of religious organizations and elected representatives. The city was recently included in a travel guide for gays, and the gay rights group Equality Utah is based in Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City also celebrates the Utah Pride Festival each June with festivities that include a large gay pride parade.
Salt Lake City is also a youthful town. The median age is only 32 years, four years younger than the national average. The metropolitan area has an even younger median age of just over 30. The entire state of Utah has the youngest population in the country, with a median age of 26.7, compared to the national median of 35.2 years.
Utah also leads the nation in the number of persons per household at 3.08, compared to the national average of 2.62. Salt Lake City is closer to the national average with 2.5 people per household.
One other interesting statistic in Salt Lake City is that there are more men than women. While nationwide, there are over 4 million more American women than there are men, Salt Lake City is 52 percent male.
Education
Salt Lake Citians place a high priority on education. Eighty-five percent of residents 25 years and over have at least graduated from high school and 39 percent have a bachelor's degree or higher.. By contrast, only 27 percent of Americans as a whole have bachelor’s degrees or higher.
Unfortunately, funding this education is difficult. Utah has high birth rates, so while it spends less per pupil than any other state, it also spends more per capita than any other state besides Alaska. Over half of the state’s budget is allocated for education. Most Salt Lake City youth (85 percent) attend public schools.
Transportation
Salt Lake City, like most of the American West, is a driving town. Eighty-three percent of workers drive to the office. However, a large number of residents use the rapidly-growing public transit system, and public transportation is widely supported by the city’s residents.
Most of Salt Lake City’s original streets were planned to be wide enough for a pioneer’s wagon team to turn around and this design helps minimize traffic congestion even today. The median commute for a Salt Lake Citian is less than 17 minutes. Only 6 percent of the city’s population spends 45 minutes or more getting to work.
Salt Lake City is well served by freeways. These include Interstate 15, which runs north to Canada and south to Mexico, and Interstate 80, running east to New York and west to San Francisco. Salt Lake’s other two major freeways are a beltway (Interstate 215) and Utah State Route 201.
Salt Lake City’s public transportation includes public buses, Amtrak passenger trains and a light rail system called TRAX. Operated by the Utah Transit Authority, it runs along a 19-mile track that stretches south to the suburb of Sandy and east to the University of Utah. The light rail (TRAX) stations are all connected by several bus routes.
The Salt Lake City International Airport (SLC) is located ten miles from downtown. It is Delta’s fourth-largest hub, with seven other airlines and their affiliates also serving the airport: American, Continental, Frontier, JetBlue, Southwest, United and US Airways. The airport served 20 million passengers last year. In passenger numbers, it ranks 22nd busiest in the United States and 59th busiest in the world. The airport is also first in the nation for on-time performance.
Crime
The Salt Lake City metropolitan area’s crime rate is low, but it more than doubles within the city limits. Metro-wide, only 345 incidents of violent crime are reported per 100,000 residents.
Salt Lake City has one of the highest crime rates in America, compared to communities of all sizes, according to neighborhoodscout.com. Within the city limits, the violent crime rate is 7.61 incidents per 1,000 people per year. (The national average, by the way, is 4.7 incidents per 1,000 people, and Utah’s average statewide is even lower at 2.5 per 1,000.) Salt Lake City sees 94.6 property crimes per 1,000 people each year, while the national median is 34.3. Over 90 percent of the communities in Utah have a lower crime rate than that of Salt Lake City.
Pollution
Salt Lake City has an occasional pollution problem and the main culprit is Mother Nature herself. The location of the Salt Lake Valley makes it prone to a weather phenomenon called inversion. This occurs when warm, windless air sits above the Salt Lake Valley, sealing in the colder air beneath it. The smog in the Valley is trapped for days or even weeks. However, while Salt Lake Citians may sometimes deal with a smog problem, they do not inhale a lot of second-hand smoke. Utah has the lowest smoking rate in the country at only 10 percent and it is one of the healthiest states in the nation.
Religion
Although Salt Lake City is the home of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, only about half of Salt Lake City residents are Mormon, and over 40 percent of Utah’s population as a whole practices other religions. Jews and Muslims, Buddhists (including a colony of Tibetan Buddhists), many Protestant denominations, Wiccans, Pagans and those who prefer to spend their ‘church’ time out of doors all make their homes in Utah.
Sports
Salt Lake City has two professional and several minor league athletic teams. The National Basketball Association’s Utah Jazz team plays in Salt Lake City’s EnergySolutions Arena. Major League Soccer team Real Salt Lake plays in the Rio Tinto Stadium. Part of the new Arena Football League, the Utah Blaze, plays in neighboring West Valley City, Utah. SLC is home to two minor-league baseball teams. And the Utah Grizzlies play professional hockey in West Valley City.