Why is sundance in park city

Events Community Events. Deer Valley Resort. Family Activities. National Ability Center. Park City Mountain. Scenic Drives. State Parks. Summer Activities. Utah Olympic Park. Woodward Park City. Winter Activities. Outdoors Biking in Park City. Cross-Country Skiing. Dog Sledding. Fly Fishing. I watched a few people come and go.

Every mouth was covered. Upon entering the restroom, I made eye contact in the mirror with a maskless man. He was furiously scrubbing his right foot with hand soap. It was a sweaty, dirty-looking dog.

He noted my presence and returned his attention to the sink. His face was scruffy and indifferent. I arrived in Park City the following night under a wine-dark sky. We feasted on braised short-ribs and scallion pancakes and then basked in the simple joy of being in the same place at the same time. My sister poured a dark IPA from a growler she recently brought back from Montana. The next day, I headed out to begin the research phase of my formal mission out west: reporting on Sundance, which, of course, was nowhere to be found.

The festival is integral to its brand, and vice versa. We were really struggling as a mountain town. And over the years, Sundance has grown from a tiny little festival to an international draw. The story of this growth is a fascinating one for anyone interested in how a place becomes a destination. Before Park City was a mountain town, it was a mining town.

After the Second World War, the price of silver plummeted and a great exodus ensued. Thanks to the resilient and enterprising spirit of the remaining Parkites, that destiny was averted. The miners and their families accepted the cold reality that they would never again be miners.

That hurt. The solution was in the land, or rather, on it: upon those idyllic snowy peaks, their future revealed itself. The miners shared their intention to build a ski resort on 10, acres to which they owned the mineral rights. Drawing out-of-state travelers, however, proved more challenging. Tourism, at least on an industrial scale, does not occur organically.

Around the same time, Robert Redford was making moves in Utah. Inspired by a motorcycle road trip, Redford purchased 5, acres in Provo Canyon. In , he built a ski resort and named it after his character in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. In , he hosted the inaugural Utah Film Festival in Salt Lake, hoping to raise the profile of American independent cinema while promoting Utah as a desirable shooting location for filmmakers.

Midnight Cowboy and Deliverance were two of the titles to play retrospectively that first year. Redford founded the Sundance Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to nurturing the craft and growth of independent film, and he moved his festival to Park City, changing the date from September to January in the process. The conceit was that a film festival in a resort town would garner more attention from Hollywood.

Redford and his team renamed it to reflect their broader commitment to American cinema. The U. Anticipation gripped the town in the weeks leading up to the festivities. Coverage in the Park Record captured the exuberance Parkites felt at the prospect of hosting Hollywood. And we should add that Park City, hopefully, will prove to be an ideal location for such an event, away from the hustle-bustle of city life.

The marriage between the town and the festival, which permanently changed its name to Sundance in , had an alchemical reaction. Sundance grew to rival the prestigious European festivals, maintaining its commitment to American indie cinema with debuts from upstart directors like Quentin Tarantino and Steven Soderbergh while widening its scope to include international and non-narrative films.

She arrived in Park City in and covered the festival every year until she retired in In addition to Treasure Mountain, which is now called Park City Mountain Resort, the development of other resorts like Deer Valley and Alta helped put Utah skiing on the international map.

The long game paid off when it was selected to host the Winter Olympics. Since the Olympics, home prices have skyrocketed and marketing dollars continue to stream in and out of Park City.

Every winter, restaurants and shops make big money by renting their space to corporate sponsors during Sundance. Historic Main Street, which still has the bones of an old mining settlement, transforms into a buzzing cosmopolitan hive. Celebrities and civilians intermingle at sponsored lounges and parties, with red carpets rolled out in front of the Egyptian Theatre each night to welcome the arrival of A-list dignitaries.

And your people are constantly telling you not to drink too much because of the altitude, but everybody just seems extremely drunk all the time. While mirth abounds every January, the festival also brings its share of headaches for locals. Such inconveniences, however, are fleeting when compared to the massive injection of cash and tax revenue that has become a reliable line item in the Park City ledger. But unlike cities and industries that suffered mightily when major events were canceled abruptly last year, Park City was not caught off guard.

That gave City Hall and Main Street time to brace for impact. The Budget Department adjusted revenue projections for the upcoming fiscal year, and business owners steered their ships away from the eye of the storm. Unlike some other places, Park City has an evolutionary ability to withstand economic shocks. And so, given time to prepare, most of the businesses in town know how to hunker down.

Right now we seat about in our restaurant for the whole day. So obviously those are huge numbers. During a typical winter, Baydala says his payroll includes 60 employees. Many businesses have made similar reductions. Last year, the independent film world found itself in a similar position to Park City, rattled, underfunded and worried about its future. It was unclear what kind of impact the pandemic would have on festivals and the indie economy at large.

Advancements in transportation have literally paved the way for Park City as it stands today. By , Park City was officially incorporated with a city hall and within the next five years Main Street had electric lights to welcome its growing mining industry.

However, for Park City the next hundred years proved to be tumultuous from the ups and downs of mining trends, a disastrous fire in wiping out three-quarters of the town, an underground explosion in , a town grappling with treating miners for lung ailments, and the population fluctuating along with these hardships.

Over the next several decades, a rope tow for skiers was built, a ski jump on the Creole mine was built in , and in Alf Engen set a world record for jumping feet at Ecker Hill. Transportation would once again revitalize the area, as special trains were designated to haul skiers from Salt Lake City to the slopes of Deer Valley. In , a major innovation transformed a mining train into a ski lift taking skiers to the Spiro Tunnel then up a shaft to the top of the mountain, even incorporating a gondola.

By the last working mine closed, but the ski industry was thriving with continued activity at Park City Mountain Resort and the opening of the Deer Valley Resort. The Sundance Film Festival found its home in Park City in and continues to bring tens of thousands of visitors to the town every January from around the globe. At the Sundance Film Festival, as we prepare to return to in-person screenings in Utah, alongside the online.