All the way to May. Park City Mountain extended their season to a kind of odd closing day on a Monday, just so they could say they were open until May. And if you missed it, closing day was one of the great ski celebrations. They had music at the base and on the deck at Miners Camp, the runs were perfectly groomed corduroy, and the weather was great. The food service was open and running at Miners Camp. With Crescent and Silverlode open, there was an amazing amount of accessible terrain. A great day all around, and a big finish to a huge season. Thanks again to the front line workers who made it happen.
On other fronts, City Hall has been trying to rebrand Poison Creek. I noticed this about six months ago when there was an article describing changes coming to “Empire Creek.” I’ve been here a long time, and spent a good portion of that time dealing with the water rights in the area. I thought I knew every creek, spring and wet spot. I’d never heard of Empire Creek. It turns out to be an effort to polish the image of the Creek Formerly Known as Poison. The water coming out of the Judge tunnel is filled with minerals, as you might expect for water coming out of a mine tunnel. It soon will get piped to the new treatment plant that has been under construction since the dawn of civilization, where it will be brought up to drinking water standards and piped to your house.
Poison Creek will no longer be poison. Once it’s dried up, it will no longer be a creek, either. Maybe it should be called “the Storm Drain Formerly known as Poison Creek.”
Sometimes a rebranding is necessary. The official name of “Treasure Hollow” on the USGS maps into the early 1970s was a racial slur that isn’t used anymore. I have no idea how it got that name, but changing it was entirely appropriate, even necessary, when the ski area opened nearly 60 years ago. Other times the name change is purely marketing. The same USGS maps showed what we call Deer Valley as “Frog Valley.” I don’t know that the resort would have enjoyed the same success as Frog Valley. Without irony, the maps show the Deer Valley parking lots as “Deer Valley Meadow.” Times change.
Changing geologic place names ought to be a deliberate decision. Sometimes government agencies will run a contest to name some new feature or rename an old one. There are bridges named “Bob” and my favorite is the British navy’s exploratory submarine, HMS Boaty McBoatface. I’m not sure that Poison Creek is improved by calling it Creeky McCreekface. But Empire Creek seems like an attempt to erase the history.
Poison Creek really was a mess. The water from the mine had its problems, but it went through a variety of other toxic operations from a livery stable full of manure, the Marsac Mill, at some point a smelter, the railroad freight yard, sewage from Old Town, and so on, for 150 years.
It’s our history — own it.
Some names are just confusing. The West Hills divide the Kamas Valley from the Jordanelle basin. The problem is that unless you are in Kamas, the West Hills are to the east. There never were a lot of people in Keetley, the town inundated by the reservoir, but it had to be confusing to go east over the West Hills. It made perfect sense on the Kamas side of the ridge. Sometimes the current names make no sense. Everybody knows where the Dan’s and Albertsons grocery stores are. The actual business names are confusingly similar and nobody uses them.
Some names are ironic. The best example of that is Forestdale Drive. The name brings up images of a tree-lined street through lush woods. The reality is a string of autobody shops, tire stores, and the Geneva Rock cement plant on a sagebrush flat. “Forestdale” sounds more appealing than “East Frontage Road US40.” But you could spend a lot of time out there searching for the forest.
Subdivisions are famously named for the last wildlife driven out by the development. There are lots of Elk-named developments around here, though the elk themselves had to move on. Great names like Dead Man Gulch and Bone Hollow, now in Hideout, will get replaced by more marketable names. Is the same house on Fluffy Bunny Court worth less if the street were named Buzzard Roost Alley?
Several years ago there was a reasonably serious effort to incorporate the Snyderville Basin area as its own municipality. It made a degree of economic sense, but when it appeared that the town name on all those mailboxes would change from “Park City” to “Snyderville,” the idea was scrapped. They could have named the new municipality anything they wanted, though the historical name seemed to have enough traction to stick. Not that there’s anything wrong with “Snyderville.” It just lacks cachet and sounds a little hillbilly. In hindsight, if that had discouraged growth, maybe it would have been worth it to try something like “Horse Fly Flats.” A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. But it’s still not Empire Creek.