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.

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^ 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!! :)