UNBOXING UTAH: What It's Like Living in UTAH

is everyone in utah mormon is everyone in utah a member of the lds seriously is everyone in utah mormon we're gonna answer those questions and a whole lot more so get out your mountain bikes and your boms we're gonna unbox the state of utah oh a mormon church or a church of jesus christ of latter-day saints this is a very important part of utah's culture but it's also very private like if you're not mormon you can't go inside but mormons say it's not about secret it's about sacred the mormon church is a mystery to a lot of people and a very uniquely american religion members of the mormon faith are aware that they are sometimes seen as a source of mystery and suspicion the membership numbers for the lds are shrinking and today about 1.7 percent of america's population is mormon that's about the same number as the jewish population yes it's true that mormons have a big influence on the politics and everything else in the state but the whole state isn't mormon sorta in order to get a well-rounded view of the state of utah we need to get out of the church and out of the home and head out into the rest of the state and see what else is going on only then can we truly know what it's like to live in utah this is utah as you'll see most of the population is in the salt lake city metro area and that area is growing super fast there's also a lot of other stuff going on in utah though especially when it comes to exploring the outdoors utah is a very interesting state and there's something different around every corner we're going to begin here in southwest utah now southern utah is one of the prettiest if not the prettiest part of utah right here along the arizona border are many of utah's national parks little touristy towns and st george st george is actually a pretty decent sized city at about 85 000 and growing pretty fast a lot of utah folks go down to st george a couple times a year especially in the winter it's sort of an artsy place and very brown and hot you could say it's a lot of mormons and old people and a lot of snowbirds have second homes here so the pace of life is really slow it has a cute downtown area and sits at the base of the red cliffs desert reserve look at this picture it's a great place for people on a fixed retirement income where you can get a home for about 375k the little teeny town of hildel along the arizona border is the polygamy capital of the world if you don't know what polygamy is it's when a man has many wives or less likely when a wife has many husbands it's pretty much outlaw these days but in utah it's a minor ticket if you can believe it polygamy isn't a big deal in the usa but if you looked up where the polygamy communities are in the u.s most are in utah but not everybody here has a sister wife come on now i wish i had many wives matthew you're married to karen and you have four kids already how many more wives and kids you need you better not get another wife i'll cut you karen that's actually pretty funny i couldn't imagine mappy with more than one wife though he definitely wouldn't be the man of the house i'll tell you that he's such a wimp most of southern utah especially south central is dominated by smallish towns and cities anywhere between a couple hundred people and a few thousand people and this is also where you'll find many of utah's recognizable national parks zion national park is here not too far from st george this is sometimes considered the crown jewel of utah's five iconic national parks there's a bunch of really pretty rocks and canyons here springdale is a little community here that's all artsy and snobby then you have bryce canyon national park which has a bunch of tall rock formations bryce canyon city or bryce is here it's also a teeny place of a couple hundred people and more tourist trap stuff next to that's the grand staircase escalante which has more rugged cliffs and terraces and these slot canyons that are really cool that can be kind of dangerous and then you have the canyonlands national park which has more canyons mesas and buttes there's more slot canyons here too this is where that hiker guy got stuck back in 2003 he spent six days wedged under a boulder before he had to cut his own arm off to get away can you imagine it seems like the whole part of southern utah is one big series of canyons and rock formations kinda is you should see them and you can see why so many people are into the outdoors in utah also of note here is lake powell where a lot of people in utah do their boating utah's very proud of its national parks especially because they have so many for a state of their size and population and while it's pretty in so many areas it's counterbalanced by a lot of drab beige nothingness in most of the state too it's kind of ironic that utah has a reputation for beauty now because part of the motivation for the mormon pioneers to settle here is that it was so ugly they didn't think anyone would bother to run them out of the area down here is southeast utah there really isn't much here the four corners national monuments here where utah colorado arizona and new mexico meet there's some small towns with hippies and farmers and self-reliant mountain folk down there many of the smaller towns in utah and on the fringes of society are teeny and a little poor there's some trailer parks sprinkled in too central utah's a lot more small towns and forests and more canyon type stuff and that's far different than over here in eastern utah which has its own culture moab's here everyone's from moab it's an artsy town outside of arches national park where you can see all the pretty rock formations you've seen in pictures moab has an interesting mix of snobs and free-spirited hippie folk a lot of people go there to mountain bike and to hike and hang out moab's growing fast there's a bunch of new condos and other buildings going up all over words out about how great utah is i tell you but more on that later also in eastern utah's vernal which is an oil town you may not know it but utah ranks 10th in the nation for oil production a lot of the oil sands here in eastern utah are a big source of income for the blue collar workers in the state and no oil does not come from dinosaurs that's a myth but there are a ton of dinosaur fossils in northeast utah in fact there's a dinosaur national monument here where people dig up dinosaur bones all the time and by people i mean paleontologists not just anyone a big chunk of eastern utah is also home to the largest native american reservation in the state called the uinta and uray reservation many of the communities here are neglected and poor and don't have casinos there isn't a casino in the entire state of utah so utahns need to drive into other states to get their gambling fix on like over here in western utah wendover is a small city on the nevada border where utah people drive to throw their money away along the utah nevada state line are several casinos which are happy to take their money thank you very much vegas is also a big destination for utah folks as well which might surprise some people given the religious demographic and vegas's reputation to get good food and to see the seedier part of life you kind of have to go to vegas since utah's pretty bland culturally there's some decent mexican food in utah but most people here eat good old-fashioned cheeseburgers fries and shakes utah is also very proud of inventing fry sauce which is just mayo and ketchup mixed i know not very exciting they put it on their burgers and fries utah was also home to the first kfc franchise but three really important food groups here are casseroles funeral potatoes and jell-o funeral potatoes are basically a potato based casserole that people serve at well funerals and jello is huge in utah they love jello with shredded vegetables or fruit chunks in it it looks gross and kind of is gross green or lime jello is a big deal here and jello is actually the official state snack jello is such a big deal here in utah that the official olympic pin from 2002 was a bowl of green jello but a lot of western utah is dominated by desert and really flat landscape the salt flats are way out this way it's so wide open and flat in western utah that people just take their cars out there and drive as fast as they can the world land speed record was set here when somebody went 142 miles an hour now that's nothing but back in 1914 it was a big deal today the land speed record is 760 miles an hour and that was set in a nearby nevada desert now we're going to move over here to northern utah which is much less desert and more mountains and trees and farming up here in the cache valley you'll find logan and its surrounding suburbs logan is where utah state university is it's an agriculture school so there's a lot of farms up this way they make a lot of milk and cheese up here winters are cold up here there's a lot of college kids and hippie rock climbers around these parts this is also an area that's growing quickly but still nothing like we'll see in the salt lake city metro area soon also up here in northern utah are rich and morgan counties which are 80 percent mormon or at least 80 percent of people up here are members of the lds church i suppose this is as good a time as any to talk about the mormon influence in utah 2.1 million of utah's 3.2 million people are considered members of the mormon church but that number might be misleading not all of them are active they're just listed in the records and people who aren't active in the church often find it's difficult to get their names removed from church records it's estimated that about 40 percent of mormons in utah are active and there are various shades of active back in the day in utah it was pretty black or white you were either mormon or you were not now today there's a lot of gray area a lot of the younger generation is sort of not really involved and more progressive and that's causing some ruffles among the active lds community it's not so much a religious concern it's a political one all these newcomers come into a state many of the younger people who are not following the book of mormon to a t they're diluting the mormon political influence liberalism and socialism is chipping away at utah's traditional republican mormon viewpoint in utah religion is a big deal but you could say the real god here is the gop almost any member of the church will put the republican party over their church values any day of the week except sunday but the lds church still has great influence over utah politics hence the term the utah legislature for example the state has strict liquor laws though those are loosening nowadays and the more active mormons you have the more political influence you have currently utah's the fastest growing state but only about a third of the population growth is because of an influx of outsiders much of the growth here is because of a high birth rate utah has the nation's second highest birth rate of all mormon families have 3.4 kids per family which is far higher than the national average of 2.1 kids per household it's not uncommon for five-year-old mormon kids to be uncles and aunts but all the mormonism and the conservative values make for a healthy population the lack of drinking and smoking makes for a very healthy community now we come to the salt lake city metro area this part of the state can be broken up into the wasatch front and the wasatch back they're separated by the wasatch mountains or mountains as utah people say the wasatch back area is here and composed of snobby areas like park city heber city midway and morgan this area is also growing fast much of the region is where the wealthy people ski or have second homes especially celebrities and athletes this is where they host the sundance film festival you likely can't afford it but the skiing is great utah has 14 ski resorts total and almost all of them are somewhere in the wasatch mountains then you cross back over to the western side of the wasatch front now this whole area here from basically brigham city all the way down to like santa quinn along the i-15 and at the base of the mountains is the wasatch front many of the communities are smallish and kind of blend in with one another there's kind of small towns with little main streets and sprawling suburbs this whole front is where most of the population growth in utah's taking place what was once wide open spaces here is now being taken up by condos and home communities and strip malls and whatever land is left here between the lakes and the mountains it's being developed quickly if you move to the wasatch front you're going to need a car since the only real public transportations in salt lake city proper 80 percent of utah's populations here and all that growth has brought in all the problems that other metro areas have seen for decades that utah had been immune to you know smog traffic homelessness drug abuse and crime in fact salt lake city is in the top five in the nation for property crimes and it's in the top 10 for drug use you probably didn't know that a lot of the property thefts in slc are to get money for drugs in terms of violent crime though there isn't much of that here except in places like south salt lake west valley city and kearns if you moved here it's not going to be cheap anymore and good luck finding a home without a bidding war lots of the people moving here from other western states like california people who are sick of the liberal bs rune in their states in terms of cities that are noteworthy here ogden up here is one of the worst for crime and poverty but it's improving now it was pretty run down for a while but it's getting better farmington's been called one of the best places in the state to live it's super safe and the schools are good we mentioned south salt lake and the surrounding area here odds are if there's a kidnapping or a murder in this part of the state it's going to be in this general area do not move to south salt lake or nearby areas you're going to regret it salt lake city might feel like a big city for utah but it's really just a midsize city there's only about two hundred thousand people here and there's not much more room to grow in this city proper it's the most diverse part of the state and probably more liberal than you thought it would be it's actually been called the most gay friendly city in the country people we mentioned how property crimes and drug use is on the rise in salt lake city homelessness is a big problem now they're working to clean up the homeless camps and spending money on homeless resource centers but the problem isn't going away it's becoming almost uncontrollable said one salt lake city councilman not too long ago and just six years ago the city had proclaimed it all but eradicated its homeless problem as salt lake city's learning though that problem is very hard to solve conversely on the northeast part of salt lake city is where all the rich people live areas like arlington hills and the avenues over by the university of utah are where a lot of the 1 percent live the avenues is all cute small antique looking homes where all the rich show-offs want to live sugar house is also a ritzy part of the salt lake city area sandy and draper down here are also very wealthy areas as are places over here like alpine highland and cedar hills eagle mountain is also a very quickly growing upper class type area as you leave salt lake city you come into what's called utah valley the culture here is far different than in salt lake city proper lehigh is the new tech hub of the state lots of tech companies are moving here so they call it the silicon slopes because it's near the mountains this is a good place for a young up and coming tech nerds down here in the utah valley cities like provo and orem are very mormon a majority of the people here are active lds members i mean this is home to brigham young university if you move to provo or orem the first question you're going to be asked by your new neighbors is are you mormon not are you from california or do you like basketball or what's your favorite color it's are you mormon this part of the utah valley is safe and a great place to raise a family the state's music scene is anchored in provo aurum down here south of that are nice communities like mapleton salem payson west mountain and spanish fork it's more rural down there there's a lot of rednecky people and farms and then there's the lakes the great salt lake and the much smaller utah lake are defining characteristics of the wasatch front both are really pretty to look at but they smell bad and have a lot of algae and bugs and shrimp if you move here go swimming in them once and it'll probably be the last time you do that there aren't really any large terrible areas along the wasatch front some cities here have good and bad neighborhoods though while to utah south salt lake west valley city and kearns and ogden or worse off if you compare them to america's real ghettos they would be considered nice the weather here in the wasatch front is actually quite pleasant a lot of sun some snow but no real brutal snowfalls overall utah has a lot of things going for it it's the fastest growing state for a reason there's bright sunshine beautiful scenery a good economy pretty good schools and not a lot of violence the income equality across households is better here than in most states utah's really not a state of haven have-nots utah people are very nice and kind they're very welcoming and generous but as the state grows and home prices skyrocket and the crime takes up and the pollution increases they have to figure out how to manage all that and as the traditionally strong mormon influence wanes it'll be hard for utah to remain the same people here are less concerned about the shift in religious tone than they are the impending growth of liberalism and socialism utah folks tend to either love it or hate it here a lot of people complain about the state's politics or the odd sometimes ostracizing culture and yet don't up and leave or become active in the community to do something about it a large part of the population here just complainers who also refuse to view the change they wish to see in the world but at the end of the day deep down they love utah and are proud to call utah home okay so we did a pretty good job of unboxing the state of utah didn't we yes we did and we could have talked about a lot of other stuff too like we didn't have time to talk about the uinta mountains how did we not talk about the you went to mountains nor did we have time to talk about how everybody in utah loves basketball and we talk about the holy war rivalry between byu and university of utah but we gotta go i think i smell the jello cooking and i wanna go and dig into a big old pile of that stuff now you talk utah you are so red and blue mormons lived here since 1842 there are a lot of mountains and a big nasty lake if you moved here from other states it won't be a mistake just add water just add water just add water just add water just add water just add water just add water just add water gel oh it's so pretty it's so gooey gel low you can eat it at a funeral j [Music] j e l l o you know it j e l it's so jiggly it's so shaky gel low [Music] with pineapple it's so fragile j j e l l o you know [Music] with some carrots and with some walnuts gel low [Music] utah loves you utah loves it but now it's also cheesecake too special thanks to kathy and austin who were a huge help in making this video you guys are totally awesome hey guys if you learned something new about america or what it's like to live in america great you should think about subscribing and turning on your notifications you can also click one of these videos or playlists for more you can also now buy my songs on itunes and other formats click the link in the description thanks for watching and remember while we all might have different views we should all be nice to each other and try to make the u.s a better place in a positive way this is sage knicks manager this has been a corner house entertainment production so like politically economically culturally are are people in utah concerned are they excited how do they feel about the near future of utah um right now there's an economic boom we're becoming unfortunately the next silicon valley and they call it silicone slopes it's a tech hub for a lot of people so it's expanding rapidly our house that we bought just five years ago has doubled in value just in a few years we've lived here in west jordan it's become really crowded up here it's traffic is a nightmare everything utah's economy is really historically stable so i think a lot of people during the pandemic have seen that now uh i want a piece of stability i don't want to be in this chaos that's going on in the rest of the world utah is very conservative there's a few areas in utah that are more liberal but overall it is extremely conservative yeah so are people worried that liberal is coming no no i think a lot of utahns are just open-minded they're like whatever if you want to come come whatever we don't care i don't see anybody like saying oh no you're not invited you're not welcome i don't see a lot of discrimination based on political affiliation or anything else like that around um i don't see it in my kids that i teach so it might be out there but i might i'm not aware of it yeah yeah well it's good that you're open-minded because it's coming oh no oh no that's not good i mean you're the flavor of the year or the decade or however long it's gonna go i mean you know everyone's going to idaho montana utah arizona most colorado that's where or down to the south where i am south carolina north carolina florida georgia tennessee um those are where the migration patterns are happening and you know i hear about how utah's battling with homeless and drug abuse and crime and pollution more than it's seen i mean you know salt lake city has been immune to all of the problems that big cities have had and now it's coming to your area so it's good that you're open-minded so you guys have a good positive outlook about it yeah um i there are there are problems with drugs and there are problems with homelessness most of that's in downtown salt lake area but they actually closed down the homeless shelter to rebuild a newer one that would triple the capacity for the homeless beds so we have fewer people sleeping on the streets and also spreading them out throughout the valley so there's one big homeless facility that they're building here and that one's for the single men there is a family homeless shelter and that one i think i don't know how many beds that has but it houses quite a few families and then they're working to build apartments that are lower income to help kind of ease the burden because right now i heard there was a two-year wait for low-income housing yeah it's like that across the country with low-income housing and affordability and it's crazy um so are you a member of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints yes okay so i hear that the lds um population is peaked and it's not as big as it was that the younger generation is sort of not as into it and being active as they were and prior the previous generation you know these millennials decide to do whatever they want to do have you noticed that is that a thing is that true or is that not true um it depends it depends on the area that you're in um there are a lot of people that are coming in from different areas and with different religious views and they're welcome you know i haven't the church has always been open-minded towards other people and other views and other religions if you follow the principles of the church it says to treat others with kindness and with love and openness and respect and i i try to follow that as best as i can um i know not everybody else does i know that that's kind of the exception but i feel it i feel like there are there are some that are very strong in the church and there are some that are not i think the pandemic has changed the perspective for a lot of people um and especially with the changes in the last year going towards a home center church supported religion in in it the focus has been more on teaching at home and then sunday services are to support that so that it puts the emphasis more on family and more on um the parents to educate their children as far as what they need to know yeah that's yeah that's interesting um i also hear that the from somebody who's part of the church that when it comes to religion versus politics that most of the mormon community would rather pick gop over church values except on sundays and that um the church is um has a big influence on the state but like as things change they're not so worried about the religious change but the political change in the state did i get that wrong or is there some truth to that at all um the church has always had a perspective that church and politics are separate um so it you vote for who you feel in your heart is the best to represent you i don't tend to vote for the gop i tend to vote more broadly i look at the political past the voting history that a person has as well as their core values and that's who i tend to vote for and i don't just vote straight party and the people that i know and associate with are the same way they won't vote just straight party they're going to vote based on what they feel is going to be best for utah so i don't know about the the right wing gokey group i i don't really affiliate with them i i tend to be more moderate yeah um if you had to pick one pro and one con about living in the wasatch front area for people that are thinking about moving to utah what would be the one biggest pro and the one biggest con about moving to your area that's a tricky one because i'm not a city girl i'm a country girl to move to the city because my son needed opportunities up here in the city so um but probably the pro would be the opportunities because he is a soccer star and that's what he loves he loves soccer he wants to go pro i couldn't have that opportunity in a rural area one of the cons is traffic and with that the air pollution that it's it's here we get air pollution in the summer we get air pollution in the winter because we sit in a valley between two mountains yeah yeah so the the pro would be the it's a growing area with a lot of opportunity in salt lake city metro but the con is also it's a growing area where you get all the stuff that comes with being a growing area so uh yeah i guess yeah um and home prices are just i mean there's not a lot of room for people to grow right i mean you're wedged between the mountains and the lake and you've got deserts so like as people flood to that area there really isn't a lot of room to grow right um from what i hear there is but you have to go further and further up the west bench and i live on the west bench um like literally a block and a half from my house is 117 acres that that there have been pronghorn antelope historically last year they plopped in an elementary in the middle of it and now that 117 acres is up for sale and they have zoned it for high density and ultra high density housing so they're going to be putting in condos and apartments and they said they were building up to a thousand units i think plus a senior center complex so the antelope will be gone unfortunately and yeah it just keeps expanding and growing and the wild spaces are no longer wild yeah it's like that everywhere in this country not everywhere but a lot of places yeah um so one final question jello i don't know if jello is as big of a thing as the stereotype is um are you do does everybody eat jello or is that like over-hyped i think it's overhyped i think that was really popular in the 1980s i grew up with green jello with shredded carrots in it in my school lunch that's just so gross [Music] but um yeah i don't see jello very often anymore i really don't see much in the way of jello salads it's gone more towards cheesecakes cheesecakes okay so cheesecake pretzel salad yes that's that's the one right now

Channel: Nick Johnson

Views: 112,760

Rating: 4.8139534 out of 5

Keywords: living in utah, utah, what is utah like, utah research, i live in utah, utah travel, what is utah, utah trivia, why do people live in utah, utah map, utah residents, utah culture, utah cost of living, moving to utah, utah realtor, utah mortgage loan, utah mountains, moving utah, utah vacation, what is salt lake city like, st. george, zion national park, moab, bryce canyon, grand staircase, jello, funeral potatoes, mormons, lds, how many mormons are in utah, salt lake city

Id: 0TSJv1iTcM0

Length: 31min 2sec (1862 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021