[MOD INPUT]

I've cleaned up a bunch of posts. As someone who has a GF who left the LDS church at 18, I get it. I understand there are potentially some impacts on non-LDS residents, so please share those, but keep direct attacks on the LDS church out of your posts. I'd rather not see this thread closed.

Minnesota enters the chat.

Thanks. My wife left LDS many years ago, but some of posts in this thread were unfortunately predictable.

I definitely think SLC is horrible. Mean people, no beer, nothing to do. I highly recommend ATL.

**suspiciously looks at username...**

Looking at my 73 bid package for March, I’d say avoid SLC. Trips are like 1/3 redeyes. 🤮

no idea what you could be looking at…❄️⛷️🏔️🏕️

Fair enough. But it is important to highlight the delta between Utah and most other states in the US. My better half is successful and that scared the living daylight out of her male, mostly caucasian, 95% of a certain religious affiliation. Her "kind" were not welcomed in Salt Lake. We left the state mainly for that reason. Loved the seasons, the outdoors were superb. Taxes are reasonable. Didn't mind the drive to WY for provisioning. In the end though, yes, it was too much.

To the OP: if I were to do it again I'd pick at the mouth of either big or little Cottonwood canyons. As high up on the benches as I could afford.

My wife is Jewish. We lived in a heavily LDS area in Wyoming, and she couldn't wait to leave. Loved the place/scenery, but basically being frozen out of every social group/thing to do was bizzaro for her.

I was born and raised in the LDS church. Getting displaced to Utah post-merger was a factor in me deciding I didn’t believe it anymore. I raised two kids here and grew up in California. Feel free to PM me for my insights on the area/culture/base or for LDS to normal English translation (some words mean different things in a Mormon context.) having said that, the church stuff drives me nuts, but I still live here and have plenty of options. I must not hate it bad enough to uproot my family and leave.

I’ve been flying in and out of here for 19 years. The lake situation is bad and getting worse. People here talk about it but the dominant political/religious perspective here means our elected officials, agriculture, and business mostly just ignore it and hope the problem will go away.

Yep, you and over a million other non-Mormons seem to tolerate the quirks of the predominate religious culture enough to come and stay. And they just keeping coming. If anything, that would be my biggest factor to dissuade someone from moving to SLC - it is crowded.

The population has roughly doubled over the last 30 years with no sign of slowing down. The state has done a pretty good job of managing the freeway infrastructure in the valley, compared to SEA or LAX (25 minutes from the south valley to the employee lot in normal traffic). But other places are crazy - especially the spectacular "great outdoors" that everyone raves about. Ski resorts are a zoo. There is peak-time lottery entry for some of the National Parks. Little Cottonwood Canyon, Utah's own tiny Yosemite Valley, is so crowded that the state wants to build a European-style gondola to alleviate traffic - and thereby spoil the spectacular views. I do a lot of alpine climbing and remote hiking, so I can still find people-free places in the mountains, but for the casual family outing to the canyons, you'd better get there before sunrise on a weekend morning if you want to find a parking spot.

It's a great place, but it's being loved to death.

As a NH with indoc this spring, hoping for SLC (which recent drops have been SLC73NB) can you describe a bit more? How long to hold a line? If on reserve, will you get used? (Sorry, still no Deltanet access to look at bid packages)

Seatosummit
 

Fair point about the crowds. It has definitely gotten worse. That’s true everywhere I’ve had any interest in living, though. Compared to SoCal and other coastal cities I think it’s still far more manageable.

PM sent - fillerfillerfiller

^ This. I get it - I knew folks who were born and raised in SLC in the 70s. They told all kinds of sad stories about the non-LDS kids being frozen-out of the neighborhood play groups. Old timers tell these absurd-sounding tales of how the alcohol laws evolved over time. For awhile, bars could only serve hard liquor in those airline-style single-serve bottles. And something about drinks had to be mixed behind a screen, not in view of the customer. In the early 2000s, I had the opportunity to view the "gotta have appetizers with a drink" dance, and all the shenanigans that went along with it. Oh, and in the early 2000s, there were no "bars" in Salt Lake City. Only "Private Clubs" that you had to be a "member" of, and your membership had to be "sponsored" by a current member. The bouncers or the bartenders would "sponsor" anyone who came through the door. A strange kabuki theater. Still got my membership card to Port 'O Call around here somewhere...........

The whole city has changed drastically over the last 20 years. I'd wager it's changed more than any other region of the country. Some of the idiosyncrasies remain (State-run liquor stores, etc). But a lot of these criticisms seem stubbornly stuck in the past.

Not a SLC resident, but I spend some time there, and try to keep up with the local news. And I just don't know what to think. In the 80s, the lake rose to a point that the state spent 60 million to install massive pumps on the west side of the lake to drain water out into the west desert (Google Bangerter Pumps).

Note the lake has an average depth of only 16 feet, so the fluctuation was huge. And now, they've got the opposite problem. And all that mud and muck at the bottom has got to have all kinda of nasty stuff in it from ~150 years of runoff from SLC and the surrounding areas. The Great Salt Lake is salty because it only has inflows, and no outflows. So every mineral, toxin, and everything else that's ever flowed in there stays (with the exception of the water that evaporates off).

At the same time, the mountains have been getting hammered with snow this year. I've heard various anecdotes, but one was "most snowfall in 20 years." One year won't fix things, but at least it's a step in the right direction. Who the hell knows though.

As others have mentioned on the topic of weather, you'll want to look up the phenomenon of the "inversion" and SLC. I'm no meteorologist, but imagine a bubble of cold air heading East, hitting the mountains near SLC, and stopping for 10 days. And every pollutant from cars, refineries, etc gets into that cold air bubble and stays. It's.....not healthy. Eventually, a weather pattern comes through and blows everything out, and it's blue skies again, but when the inversion is here, it sucks.

Haha, I remember the "private clubs". Kind of goofy and now a thing of the past.

Regarding the lake, I have heard that parts of the lake shore, up by Syracuse and West Point, experience elevated arsenic levels when the wind picks up dust from the dried lake bed. Maybe best to avoid living there long term, or at least getting a good HVAC system with air filtration if you buy a house in that area. Realtors and/or homebuilders can probably help with more detailed info.

This post is blowing my mind. I have friends in SLC who are not Mormon and have lots of friends who are not Mormon. Their kids have no issues at school or playing sports.

Blowing my mind as in “I learned something new?” Or blowing my mind as in “I’m gonna be sarcastic because if it didn’t happen to my friends it obviously doesn’t happen and everyone else is just making stuff up?”

It’s pretty clear a lot of information in here in early pages is very outdated and incorrect. But hey, the wrap will remain for decades I’m sure. That’s fine, don’t move here!! :)

We lived in SLC for a decade until about two years ago. For context, we left because of the covid/furlough situation, my wife's career, and a few other timely personal reasons. Not because we didn't like Utah. We still own our house there, and will likely use it again in the future.

Like anywhere else, Utah has its problems. Most places in the country have a bell curve with the population when it comes to any given topic (religion, politics, activities, diet, economics, social economic status, etc etc). There are people on the fringes, but most everyone is generally in the middle. In Utah, it seems like there are two humps towards each end of the spectrum and each end tries very hard to show the world that they are not the other. Either you are LDS, or your are very much not. You are MAGA Republican, or you are progressive Democrat. You are a rare-steak eating carnivore, or you are vegan. Honestly it doesn't matter where you sit on any of given topic, the fact that these extremes exist and are so ubiquitous that it's ends up being tiring. You can't escape it; it's constant.

Also the things others have mentioned: Cost of living is up if you weren't grandfathered in in some way, the GSL is drying up and the way they manage water is "survival of the fittest" (at least the gov is talking about it this year...20 years too late), the area is being loved to death, etc etc.

But if you like the outdoors, there is no better place on the planet. You can do literally any outdoor activity you want within an hours drive of SLC (except white water rafting...that's a four hour drive to CO). If you're willing to drive more than an hour or to hike it to the backcountry more than 20 minutes, you'll find yourself all alone. It's beautiful. Even after 12 years, we still had tons of places on our bucket list to go see and do there. All the crap that you deal with is worth it if you get outside a lot.

Totally. I lived in SEA for a few years and I love the outdoor recreation there, but the best spots (Olympic Peninsula, Mt Rainier, N. Cascades) are 2-3+ hours drive from the Puget Sound area. In SLC, it's a 20-30 minute drive to spectacular trails and skiing in Big/Little Cottonwood Canyons or Park City, and less than 2 hours from mid-week isolation in the Uintas. Absolutely love it!

Good point. In Seattle, though you’ve also got the water. That’s the one thing that was missing in SLC. I can be 10 minutes from scuba diving while still being just an hour and a half from the slopes. Both top tier places for outdoors stuff for sure!

Moved to PC 4 years ago. I’m not a big drinker or fan of people. With that said, I have a garage fridge full of beer for friends in town to ski and I have 6 bottles of High West Whiskey in the cabinet. I can’t buy it on Sunday…so I’ve stocked up for lots of Sundays. Most pilots in SLC are outdoor oriented and, regardless of religion, I always have common interests. My kids have plenty of friends. This thread is BS from my experience. But like I said, I’m not out to be popular so if I was being outcasted, I wouldn’t notice anyway. Had a friend move into North SLC with all these concerns…its been a non-factor for him/family. If you’re on the fence, rent for a couple years…or grab a condo over the summer and commute.

What are lift tickets going for these days? I haven't been out there in 15 years, so I can imagine they are out of sight expensive now.

I found out. DuckDuck is an amazing thing.

Yikes!

Regarding the lake…it’s an endorheic lake in a high-evaporation environment. Levels can fluctuate greatly in basins like that. The lake was at similarly low levels in the 1960s, and record highs in the 1980s. Pretty much the entire northwestern portion of Utah was a huge lake in prehistoric times (Lake Bonneville). SLC’s water is mostly groundwater….that being said, large growing cities in arid locations makes managing water resources challenging.

SLC is also located along two major earthquake fault lines.

Last decent shake was in 2020, 5.7 on the RS was in Magna (West of SLC)

Nothing for you CA residents, but it certainly surprised us.

As a practical matter, homebuyers should be aware that some of the older neighborhoods have very charming brick houses (re: “unreinforced masonry”) that will NOT fare well in a large earthquake. They’re expensive to insure (normal home owner’s insurance won’t cover it) and policies are hard to find. My earthquake insurance is over $2k/yr, with an eye watering deductible.

Regular newer homes are much cheaper to insure against this eventuality.

Just something to be aware of.

https://earthquakes.utah.gov/unreinforced-masonry/