A cautionary tale follows, one that may mirror future stories from cities in Texas, Florida and other red states that are recipients of refugees from blue states.
My family lived in Park City, Utah full time since 1991. We called it home. Periodically, we were pulled away by career changes, but we never stopped thinking about getting back home to live - and at every opportunity, we did, returning each time with the full intent of making Park City our permanent home.
In 2013, we thought we had returned for the final time.
But a few months ago, we decided to leave for good.
We owned two properties inside the city limits.
Sold them both.
No sadness, no regrets.
Relief, actually.
A recent guest editorial in the local paper proposed the PC we loved is dead and isn't going to come back any time soon.
I completely agree.
It was once a place where the the main entrance to town was a two-lane highway and at 4 PM every afternoon, traffic stopped on the highway at the edge of Quarry Mountain for the herd of milk cows to move across to the milking barn. The communities were small, the ski three resorts were locally owned, lift tickets were $25, school kids qualified for a $75 season pass, locals skied in decades old ski clothing held together with duct tape, most of the restaurants closed in the summer offseason and you could get a full breakfast for five bucks at the Mount Air Café (which was basically an old truck stop).
Not now. The cows are long gone, the population has exploded from ground zero at the base of what used to be Park City Mountain Resort into the Snyderville Basin and beyond into the county, three seasonal ski resorts became two corporate owned, year-round resorts, lift tickets are way over a hundred dollars a day, skiers are all decked out in designer outfits and breakfast prices rival those in Manhattan.
What happened?
Some will say it was inevitable growth, but the truth is that people loved it to death.
People came to Park City, loved it, and decided it was a very desirable lifestyle.
And it was, at least until they changed it.
And by “they”, I mean people who wanted to escape their own environs and the social and cultural damage years of their ideologies had wrought. They had the means to do so, and rather than accepting Park City for the small, free, liberal town it was, changed it into some pale imitation of that which they were escaping, complete with the very ideologies from which they were fleeing.
These were people who wanted to keep all the things with which they were familiar but treat the Wasatch Back as a rented bouncy house they could use and then just go back to their usual lives.
But the structural changes they induced (those changes facilitated by locals who either agreed and complied with the newcomers or couldn’t resist the tide of change) are powerful – and enduring.
The results were sky high costs of housing, skyrocketing HOA fees for services that got a little worse every year (they doubled in four years), expensive everything ($20 cheeseburgers). On top of that, add a faddish local government that treats locals like dirt (while catering to tourists like royalty), public schools that once rivaled expensive private schools that are now drowning under a tidal wave of woke, and unfriendly, corporate ownership of the cookie cutter resorts.
These have finally turned Park City into Aspen West.
The uniqueness of a low key, no Walmart, one stoplight Park City life is gone.
The lifestyle and costs were not the only things that changed.
Park City once attracted a lot of ski bums, refugees who lived a lifestyle geared around skiing. It was a liberal town in the old sense of liberalism – the “you do you” and “do your own thing” ethos was common within the community. The priority was living an independent life, one free to do what one wanted to do, when one wanted to do it.
No more.
Park City exemplifies how old school liberalism mutated into the woke authoritarian progressivism of today. It is also once again a company town, in a different manner that when the silver baron called the shots, but with the same feel as when its reason for existing was silver ore rather than snow.
And the politics have come to reflect the need for the local government to go along to get along with their new corporate masters and a majority of citizenry who are attempting to transform the city into some sort of wokester’s paradise. Over the past few years, parents have had to fight off LGBTQ indoctrination programs in elementary schools, had a black lives mural painted on the main street in town (with the blessings of the city government), suffer an editorial from a sitting City Council member who claimed the woke agenda was Park City and if you weren’t down with it, maybe you shouldn’t live here – all the while the same woke people were lapping up the flood of money from developers eager to carve up what remains of the mountains around town.
Leaving was not without consequences.
We left many good friends and by moving out of the county, I had to resign from my chairmanship of the county GOP. We miss the easy access to outdoor activities, but we agreed it was time. Most of the things we loved about PC were gone and the remainder was just not enough to stay.
I saw a meme that sums up the fall of Park City and it is a warning for other areas that are getting loved to death – the people moving in should remember they are refugees, not missionaries. Residents should remember that as well - and act accordingly to protect their communities.
Because as much as love can liberate, it can kill, especially when it comes with baggage filled with progressivism.
The TV show Yellowstone is showing what it takes to attempt to stand up to developers ..... and it is not pretty .... I'm sure that is over simplified and also intensified for TV ... but still, one gets the idea ....