Park City, Utah Ski Spectacle

Welcome to Park City, Utah!; A town filled with a luscious history of discovery, struggle, and success. Park City offers an adventure of wealth, potential, and freedom that can suit everyone. From skiing to walking main street, the town is filled with great local experiences. I cannot express how much this town felt like a home, with the overpowering mountains that easily nestled me into its nature. I began with the drive into the town, in which the nature was beautifully pristine. The people were warm and welcoming, allowing me to remember the aura of the mountains vividly.

However, past the gorgeous views I found more than meets the eye. Park City has a unique origin different from what it is seen as today. It has been through silver mining wealth to severe devastation to gold medal skiing success. The beautiful history of this town and its struggle to do anything to survive, even transform their quaint community of miners into a recreational resort of world class ski resorts and upscale establishments, has a wonderful presence to this day.

Park City lies at the base of the Rocky Mountains, secretly caressed into the natural landscape that gives it its tourist glory. The town houses 8,066 residents in a 17.6 square mile region encompassed by Iron Mountain, Bald Mountain, and more. There are 1, 871,540 combined total ski days from all three resorts, amounting to the winter wonderland that people continue to experience today. Park City allows an adventure lifestyle through the 131 restaurants spread throughout the town and on ‘Historic Main Street’, as well as 286 retail stores. Moreover, the work that Parkites experienced to reach the luxury of Park City today shows the struggle and persistance that the town was built around. Park City would not be the spectacle of vast mountain ranges and picturesque views without the exploitaion of these ideas and the influential work of the Utah government and publicity of skiing and the Olympics.

The presented ideas of Park City concreted in being a spectacule filled with picturesque views lies at the heart of its history and transformation into a place of tourist destination. The spectacule of having three world-renown ski resorts within 10 miles of each other nestled into the Rocky Mountains is hard to resist for any adrealine junkie or prestigious businessmen. Even the breath-taking views from various locations throughout the city and resorts, gives Park City an appropriate branding of being the mountain getaway. Yet, the assumed ideas of Park City being a picturesque spectucule of beauty rises from the miners want of a ski resort is hardly fair to the Parkite’s struggle against the economy, changing view towards my travel. The triumphal history of Park City gives the full picturesque view of the true specatule rightfully earned by the residents of gorgeous Park City, Utah.

In short, the idea of Park City being filled with high-class experience and picturesque views has a deeper meaning than acknowledged by most. During western expansion, the West was being dramaticized by wilderness, adventure, and unknown, where “…the demand for greater emotional storms led people above all toward the mountains” ,From this, promoters recruited their traveling audiences by providing the reassurance of a safe, natural environment, that the average traveler needed . Growing from this need of creating the suspense and adventure of nature, the picturesque emerged.

Park City, Utah lies at the heart in this beauty of the Rocky Mountains. The images of breath-taking vastness, aura, and expanse continue to impress visitors, and impressed me, from around the world. In Park City the “huge spaces, clear air, intoxicating solitude, and a sense of freedom made the mountain expanses into a romantic and revolutionary utopia”.

When I visited this town full of adventure and gorgeous views I skiied, laughed, and gazed in awe of the mountains that allowed me to enjoy them so easily. I encourage people to remember the ways in which the city has been promoted and portrayed by the state legislation and impact of critical historic events. Nonetheless, it is a great place to travel to, especially during the winter season, where one can ski everyday a various resorts, and at night enjoy the relaxing fireside or watch the drifting snow fall onto the silence of the street.

(*The reason I have written in such a manner is to promote the ideas that have created this town. I feel that the experience has more value when I can respect its history, its picturesque views, and how it was created as a skiing spectacle.) (References to articles by Debord and Lefogren)

Next, I began to search deeper into the meaning and how this town became such an amazing place of experiences.  The idea of spectacule played into this directly, and has its foundation in being “a pseudo-world apart”,  “a product of real activity”, and “a social relationship between people that is mediated by images“ according to Gay Debord. It is readily accepted as reality by spectators lured in by the accumulation of attractions that are strategically presented to the outside world. As these places of spectacle are presented as enormously positive, the impact of their presence is large and important. They create a certain allure or interest from mass amounts of people who foster the continuation of these places. From such a large motivation of travelers wanting to experience these attractions, there is an economy that can thrive on its existence. While the criticism of a spectacle has been repulsed by the presence of such an unreality capitalizing on people’s desire for magnificent experiences, it has created a new society of overwhelming attractions. Park City is a direct example of the benefit of this nurtured idea and has created a great place of travel.