Driving out past the town of Delta on a gravel road for a couple of hours, we almost turned around. Following a rain storm, the road is wet and muddy but still decent. Jesse Fisher is worried we’ll get stuck, but we plow through giant puddles of water, and as the clouds lift, we reach the homestead community of Riverbed Ranch, consisting of 1250 acres of reclaimed desert.

Almost like an oasis, Riverbed Ranch is home to 40 families who decided to depart city life, municipal taxes, congestion, air, light and sound pollution, and live in a place among chickens, goats and cows on self-reliant homesteads. 

Describing Riverbed Ranch as “bucolic” would be inaccurate at this point. Sometimes there are purple flowers in the valley, but currently it is a desert — still beautiful, but most of the properties in the sprawling valley are still works-in-progress. But the scale of the valley and witnessing in person the first brand new town to break ground in Utah in 75 years is quite remarkable. 

A few of the 2.5 acre plots consist of a trailer and a fence. Some plots have nice little homes that appear very homemade; others have more complete homes with nice fencing, with nicely organized pens for different animals, orchards and organization. 

Some homes under construction even appear upscale and modern, where the inhabitants are indeed living as modern homesteaders, not seeking “luxury retreats” like so many other empty homes in Utah being built in hot tourist destinations such as Moab and Park City.

We start by speaking with Tom and Kathy Barnes, whose homestead is a model for order and function. Turkeys walk around in their pen, excited for feeding time. Beside the turkey pen is another pen for chickens; one for goats, and another for pigs. All of the pens are connected to a large barn. By the look of their operation, the Barnes appear to be seasoned professionals.

Indeed they are. Tom and Kathy raised their eight children “on a teacher’s salary,” homesteading in Payson, Utah on ten acres, reaching the point where the only store-bought items were toilet paper, shampoo, toothpaste and cashews. Most everything else, including fresh fruits, vegetables, milk and meat were raised themselves.

Tom had just finished feeding his three hungry pigs when he took a moment to talk to me.

“What are the advantages to living on a homestead?” I ask. 

“Listen,” he says. “You can hear a pig eating … Once in a while we will hear a fighter jet pass over but that’s it.” 

The Barnes are calm and content in their semi-retirement. They set up their homestead at Riverbed Ranch five years ago. They already knew homesteading and they realized even in retirement they could help the other inhabitants here, those with less experience, learn how to take on the demanding but satisfying lifestyle.

“It’s basically like an extended family,” says Tom. “We are all like-minded out here. We are all going to help one another when our neighbors need help.”

Tom says he and most of his neighbors are members of the LDS Church, and that most of the city’s LDS members are a part of a ward which makes up their “ward family.” “Out here,” he says, “everybody is our extended family. So we all know we are going to help one another and learn to get along … Like early pioneers in a small town. It’s very much the same thing.

A wild goose chase?

“We could live out here like it was 1849, but we have all of the conveniences of modern society, so why not take advantage of the best of both worlds?”

I wonder how adaptable these modern pioneers are. Raised on a homestead, would these folks ever want to join the modern world again? The Barnes kids are mostly choosing city life, but their kids and grandkids love visiting them, running around free-range. Tom adds, “One of our sons is starting his own homestead in Piute County.”

We drive around on the hard gravel roads and get a sense of how all of the residents here justify the hard-scrabble, off-grid life, which requires living off pumped well water, solar power for electricity, and propane for heat. 

We are aiming to get a sense of the  bigger reason why all of these people are out here, far away from freeways and Walmarts. Are they all latter-day preppers?

Thousands showed up to protest. The decision may have already been made.

When thousands of Box Elder County residents packed the fairgrounds to protest the proposed 40,000-acre Stratos data center, they thought they were confronting the people in charge.

They weren’t.

The county commissioners stood at the front of the room, absorbing the anger, the frustration, the disbelief. They looked like decision-makers. But by their own account, they weren’t.

Because the decision may have already been made—long before the public ever showed up.

The Illusion of Authority

What happened at that meeting wasn’t civic engagement. It was something closer to theater.

No meaningful public comment. No real debate. No clear path for residents to influence the outcome. Just a room full of people reacting to a project that, structurally, may already be locked in.

Why?

Because the real authority doesn’t sit with Box Elder County.

It sits with the Utah Military Installation Development Authority.

Once MIDA designates a project area, the rules change. Local zoning can become irrelevant. Private land stays private. Water rights remain private. And the role of local government shifts from decision-maker to facilitator.

In plain terms: the county doesn’t decide if the project happens. It helps manage how it happens.

So when residents showed up demanding answers, they were asking the wrong people.

A Process That Skips the Public

That should concern anyone paying attention.

Because it flips the normal order of things. Instead of:

Proposal → Public input → Decision

We get:

Decision → Public meeting → Reaction

And by the time the public enters the room, the real levers of power have already been pulled.

So what exactly was that meeting?

If commissioners don’t have authority to stop the project, then the meeting wasn’t about deciding anything. It was about absorbing pressure. Managing optics. Creating the appearance of a process that had already moved on.

That’s not transparency. That’s choreography.

Follow the Missing Pieces

When Kevin O’Leary appeared on Fox Business and casually announced that Utah would soon become home to what could be the largest AI data center project in the world, many Utahns had the same reaction:

Wait… this was already approved?

For more than a decade, FanX has called the Salt Palace home. With the convention center set to close for a massive renovation, founder Dan Farr is preparing for a new chapter while planning one final celebration in its longtime venue.