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The Stratos Project and Corporate Power: Who Controls Utah’s Future?
If we were all just consumers, Governor Cox, Mike Lee, Speaker Schultz, and Kevin O’Leary would have it easy. If we were just more concerned about money, jobs, and tech,…
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Utah Wants Affordable Homes. So Why Did It Kill the Starter Home Bill?
Utah leaders have spent years talking about affordable housing. Governor Spencer Cox has repeatedly emphasized the need for more attainable housing, with a goal of creating tens of thousands of…
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The Utah Bombings That Exposed One of America’s Greatest Forgers
On an ordinary October morning in 1985, downtown Salt Lake City was shattered by a blast that killed businessman and document collector Steve Christensen. Hours later, a second bomb tore…
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Riverbed Ranch Utah: Cult, Commune, or Utah’s First Modern Homesteading Town?
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…
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The $7 Million Recruit: How NIL Changed College Athletics Forever
In 2012, Jabari Parker, a top high school prospect and member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was facing his biggest decision to that point in his…
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How Does a Person Become Homeless and Addicted? One Utah Father Explains
Back in the 1980s, most Utah parents worried about things like bad grades, skipping church, teenage drinking, or hanging around the wrong crowd. Very few parents walked through downtown Salt…
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Inside Moab’s Political Divide: Land, Tourism, and the Future of Grand County, Utah
In the late 1950s, Edward Abbey took a job as a park ranger at Arches National Monument, just outside Moab. What he found there, and what he watched happen to…
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Why Did Salt Lake City Tear Down Its Most Beautiful Buildings?
If you go into the Utah State Archives and spend time with photographs from the late 1800s and early 1900s, you start to notice something that doesn’t line up with…
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Utah Official’s $36K Travel Reimbursements Raise Questions About Use of Taxpayer Funds
The trek into the office is a necessary evil for many employees; unpaid time that could be spent elsewhere. But some state employees are able to cash in on their…
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Cottonwood Heights Corruption Allegations: A Case That Never Reached a Courtroom
A year ago, we here at Utah Stories recorded a podcast episode that we never published. We were revisiting corruption allegations from ten years ago. We decided not to publish…
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Utah Homelessness Crisis: Tyler Clancy Challenges ‘Housing First’ Failures
“It’s not normal to see someone sleeping on the sidewalk in a sleeping bag with a needle sticking out of their arm.” That sentence should not be controversial. In a…
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From $65K Homes to Million-Dollar Athletes: What Happened to Utah’s Middle Class?
In March of 1979, the center of the NCAA sports world landed in Salt Lake City to witness history. Magic Johnson faced Larry Bird for the NCAA championship on the…
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Why Most People Stay Stuck in Business and What It Takes to Move Forward
Every so often, you meet an immigrant who came here with almost nothing and managed to build something exceptional. Prakash Shah is the kind of man who has spent enough…
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Moab’s Identity Crisis: Off-Road Adventure, Tourism, and the Fight Over Utah’s Desert Trails
our dogs has been our escape for the past twelve years. (If you don’t like dogs, take your kids, your bikes, your jeep, your UTV or ATV and have a…
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Growing Up in Utah’s Foster Care System: One Child’s Story
Celeste was five years old the first time she dragged a kitchen stool across the linoleum, climbed up to the stove, and made dinner. On good days there was a…
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Whiskey, Bullets & a Buried Town: Archaeologists Reveal Alta’s Wild Past
Before Alta was known for powder days and lift lines, it was a silver mining town clinging to the side of a narrow canyon. In the late 1800s, men lived…