Sports & Recreation

Syracuse, a small, nostalgic farm community located about 25 miles north of Salt Lake City and bordering the eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake, was officially settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1850s. Before that time, it was open land occupied by Native Americans and frequented by mountain men. At the turn of the 20th century, Syracuse became a small farming community with dedicated, hardworking people. Many notable pioneer families settled strong roots that made Syracuse what it is today. After World War II, Syracuse slowly developed into an urban sprawl. While the 21st century has transitioned Syracuse from a farming community to a fast-growing city, the people and land continue to exemplify industrious values.

Author Lynn Arave has compiled more than 190 photographs, including many vintage images from the Wasatch Mountain Club to showcase the Uinta Mountains, known as the “roof” of Utah, with elevations exceeding 13,000 feet above sea level.

These mountains, essentially “the Alps of Utah,” comprise more than 450,000 acres, with Kings Peak—13,528 feet above sea level—as the state’s tallest point.

The Uintas are also unusual because they run east-west instead of the usual north-south direction for US mountains. Besides being a significant water generator for three states, the Bear River has its headwaters here, as do the Weber, Provo, and Duchesne Rivers. Much of the Uintas are designated as a wilderness area, and the area boasts more than 1,000 natural lakes. The mountains are a popular recreation haven with superb scenery, camping, hiking, and fishing.

Lynn Arave earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism from Weber State University. He is an avid hiker and has ascended Kings Peak four times. He has conducted extensive research into the history of Utah and the Uintas. He is also the author of Images of America: Layton, the coauthor of Images of America: Great Salt Lake, and has written other historical books.

At Bonneville, record holders must first earn the right to present themselves on the starting line. This requires passing rigorous safety and technical checks for driver, rider, and speed machine. Gender is inconsequential. Through the years, more than 200 women have made the cut and donned fireproof clothing and helmets. Dozens have set land speed records--35 in excess of 200 miles per hour, six above 300 miles per hour, and one deaf female racer who roared past 500 miles per hour. Equally impressive are the women who helped propel the helmeted gals into glory. Few know how many women are skilled fabricators, mechanics, crew chiefs, and all-round land speed racing experts, all working out on a brutal, merciless, and barren sodium-soaked playa. And for decades dedicated volunteers have not only put down that all-important starting line but erected a speed village that inspired tens of thousands to visit, taunting the timing lights run after run. Since 1949, women have played an integral part. Without question, land speed racing has more women actively participating and setting records than any other segment of motorsports in the world.

Great Salt Lake is bleak yet beautiful, mysterious and alluring, an endangered “dead sea” vital to life. Explorer Jedediah Smith, surrounded by a vast wilderness, realized this felt to him like home. Conservationist John Muir found in the briny waters a sublime baptism and came out, in his words, salted and clean as a saint. Nineteenth-century Utahns built the first resorts, such as Saltair; bathed and floated in the water; and began extracting valuable salts and minerals from the ever-fluctuating lake. Ringed with wildlife refuges, it is a haven for migrating birds. With multiple state parks, Antelope Island among them, Great Salt Lake is today a magnet for sight-seeing, swimming, hiking, biking, horse riding, and sailing—just a few of the ways to experience what pioneer-era surveyor Howard Stansbury described as a “great and peculiar beauty.”

Author Lynn Arave gathered rare historic photographs to capture the majestic Wasatch Mountains - the rugged backbone of northern Utah.

Stretching some 160 miles, from Nephi on the south to Grace, Idaho, on the north, their elevations rise to nearly 12,000 feet above sea level. Mount Nebo, at the range’s south end, is a mammoth, triple-peaked monolith at a top elevation of 11,928 feet, the Wasatch’s highest. Dozens of densely vegetated and narrow canyons cut through the Wasatch. Thirteen public ski resorts, plus hundreds of miles of hiking and biking trails, bisect the Wasatch and offer world-famous recreation. These mountains were the centerpiece of the Salt Lake 2002 Winter Olympic Games and will also be for the Salt Lake 2034 Olympic Games. This book contains more than 125 historic photographs, including dozens of vintage pictures from the Wasatch Mountain Club’s collection.

Settled by miners and Mormons after the Civil War and incorporated in 1884, Park City grew into one of the world's most prestigious mining camps.

Known primarily for its richness in silver, Park City miners also extracted lead, zinc, gold, and copper from the surrounding hills. With the town and its mines located at over 7,000 feet above sea level, miners faced brutal winters to unleash treasure for the nation. As the mines grew, so too did the town, attracting businesspeople, grocers, doctors, lawyers, teachers, and more to the area, in addition to miners and prospectors seeking to strike it rich. While most miners faced tough lives and died young, some did create legacies beyond their wildest dreams. Park City made many a millionaire, including David Keith, Thomas Kearns, R.C. Chambers, John Judge, John Daly, and Suzanne Bransford Emery Holmes Delitch Engalitcheff (also known as the "Silver Queen"). From mines large (like the Silver King and the Ontario) to small (like the Nelson Queen), Park City's early history is that of the triumphs and tragedies of mining, the ebbs and flows of the community, and the metals that made it all happen.

Dalton Gackle is the research, digital services, and social media coordinator at the Park City Museum (Park City, Utah). An American West and pop culture historian by way of the Midwest, Gackle manages the Park City Museum's Hal Compton Research Library.

Anyone would be hard-pressed to find a pastime more emblematic of the western spirit than fly-fishing. Liberating, poetic, wild, soothing and inspiring, it pushes the boundaries of the mind. In essays ranging from introspective to ironic, angler authors Chadd VanZanten and Russ Beck distill the purest truths of fly-fishing into essential, often humorous rules of thumb. With kernels like always tell the truth sometimes and all the fish are underwater, wade into the blue ribbon waters of Montana, Idaho, Wyoming and Utah to reflect metaphysically on these lines of practical wisdom.

Not much drives passionate debate in Utah more than public land use. And sport climbing is securely tethered to that controversy as more thrill-seekers gear up each year to ascend the state's geological wonders. From the bolt wars in Moab to the frenzied route development in American Fork Canyon, Utah remains central in the evolution of the sport. With over sixty interviews and a healthy dose of humor, climber and author Darren M. Edwards tracks the spirit, ethos and feats of bolters who have led the way since the 1980s.

The Bear River rises in the high Uinta Mountains and flows through Wyoming, Idaho and Utah before emptying into the Great Salt Lake. Within the watershed are scores of secluded trout streams, dozens of reservoirs and one of North America's largest populations of native cutthroat trout. Angler and author Chadd VanZanten offers a compelling portrait of the most extraordinary fly-fishing destinations you've never heard of. It's also a story of embattled but resilient ecosystems, warring factions of the American West, a dash of San Francisco counterculture, cataclysmic upheavals of the planet itself and, of course, pursuing big, elusive trout.