Utah

Harry Reid International Airport (IATA: LAS, ICAO: KLAS, FAA LID: LAS) is an international airport in Paradise, Nevada, and is the main airport for the Las Vegas Valley, a metropolitan area in the U.S. state of Nevada, about 5 miles (8 km) south of Downtown Las Vegas. The airport is owned by the Clark County Commission and operated by the Clark County Department of Aviation. LAS covers 2,800 acres (1,100 hectares; 4.4 square miles; 11 square kilometers) of land.The airport was built in 1942, and opened to airline flights in 1948. It has expanded and employed various innovative technologies, such as common-use facilities. The airport has four runways and two passenger terminals. East of the passenger terminals is the Marnell Air Cargo Center; on the airport's west side are fixed-base operators and helicopter companies. The airport services as a base for Allegiant Air, Frontier Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and Spirit Airlines. The airport is named after U.S. Senator Harry Reid, who represented Nevada in the Senate from 1987 to 2017. Between 1968 and 2021, the airport was called McCarran International Airport; before 1968, it was named McCarran Field after U.S. Senator Pat McCarran, who represented Nevada from 1933 to 1954.

The Red Cliffs National Conservation Area is a 44,724-acre (180.99 km2) National Conservation Area located in southwest Utah, north of St. George at the northeasternmost edge of the Mojave Desert. It is managed by the Bureau of Land Management as part of the National Landscape Conservation System, and was created as part of the Omnibus Public Land Management Act of 2009.The Red Cliffs National Conservation Area (NCA) is part of the larger multi-jurisdictional Red Cliffs Desert Reserve, which was created in 1996 to protect the habitat and populations of the desert tortoise and other species. Part of the NCA was designated in 2009 as the Cottonwood Canyon and Red Mountain wilderness areas, which are part of the National Wilderness Preservation System. The Pine Valley Mountains and Dixie National Forest are north of the NCA. The NCA is located within the watershed of the Virgin River, a tributary of the Colorado River. There are over 130 miles (210 km) of non-motorized trails in the NCA.

Zion National Park is an American national park located in southwestern Utah near the town of Springdale. Located at the junction of the Colorado Plateau, Great Basin, and Mojave Desert regions, the park has a unique geography and a variety of life zones that allow for unusual plant and animal diversity. Numerous plant species as well as 289 species of birds, 75 mammals (including 19 species of bat), and 32 reptiles inhabit the park's four life zones: desert, riparian, woodland, and coniferous forest. Zion National Park includes mountains, canyons, buttes, mesas, monoliths, rivers, slot canyons, and natural arches. The lowest point in the park is 3,666 ft (1,117 m) at Coalpits Wash and the highest peak is 8,726 ft (2,660 m) at Horse Ranch Mountain. A prominent feature of the 229-square-mile (590 km2) park is Zion Canyon, which is 15 miles (24 km) long and up to 2,640 ft (800 m) deep. The canyon walls are reddish and tan-colored Navajo Sandstone eroded by the North Fork of the Virgin River. Human habitation of the area started about 8,000 years ago with small family groups of Native Americans, one of which was the semi-nomadic Basketmaker Ancestral Puebloans (who used to be called Anasazi by early non-indigenous archeologists)(c. 300 CE). Subsequently, what has been called the Virgin Anasazi culture (c. 500) and the Parowan Fremont group developed as the Basketmakers settled in permanent communities. Both groups moved away by 1300 and were replaced by the Parrusits and several other Southern Paiute subtribes. Mormons came into the area in 1858 and settled there in the early 1860s. In 1909, President William Howard Taft named the area Mukuntuweap National Monument in order to protect the canyon. In 1918, the acting director of the newly created National Park Service, Horace Albright, drafted a proposal to enlarge the existing monument and change the park's name to Zion National Monument, Zion being a term used by the Mormons. According to historian Hal Rothman: "The name change played to a prevalent bias of the time. Many believed that Spanish and Indian names would deter visitors who, if they could not pronounce the name of a place, might not bother to visit it. The new name, Zion, had greater appeal to an ethnocentric audience." On November 19, 1919, Congress redesignated the monument as Zion National Park, and the act was signed by President Woodrow Wilson. The Kolob section was proclaimed a separate Zion National Monument in 1937, but was incorporated into the national park in 1956. Congress designated 85% of the park a wilderness area in 2009. The geology of the Zion and Kolob canyons area includes nine formations that together represent 150 million years of mostly Mesozoic-aged sedimentation. At various periods in that time warm, shallow seas, streams, ponds and lakes, vast deserts, and dry near-shore environments covered the area. Uplift associated with the creation of the Colorado Plateau lifted the region 10,000 feet (3,000 m) starting 13 million years ago.

Bryce Canyon National Park () is an American national park located in southwestern Utah. The major feature of the park is Bryce Canyon, which despite its name, is not a canyon, but a collection of giant natural amphitheaters along the eastern side of the Paunsaugunt Plateau. Bryce is distinctive due to geological structures called hoodoos, formed by frost weathering and stream erosion of the river and lake bed sedimentary rocks. The red, orange, and white colors of the rocks provide spectacular views for park visitors. Bryce Canyon National Park is much smaller and sits at a much higher elevation than nearby Zion National Park. The rim at Bryce varies from 8,000 to 9,000 feet (2,400 to 2,700 m). The Bryce Canyon area was settled by Mormon pioneers in the 1850s and was named after Ebenezer Bryce, who homesteaded in the area in 1874. The area around Bryce Canyon was originally designated as a national monument by President Warren G. Harding in 1923 and was redesignated as a national park by Congress in 1928. The park covers 35,835 acres (55.992 sq mi; 14,502 ha; 145.02 km2) and receives substantially fewer visitors than Zion National Park (nearly 4.3 million in 2016) or Grand Canyon National Park (nearly 6 million in 2016), largely due to Bryce's more remote location. In 2018, Bryce Canyon received 2,679,478 recreational visitors, which was an increase of 107,794 visitors from the prior year.

Goblin Valley State Park is a state park of Utah, in the United States. The park features thousands of hoodoos, referred to locally as goblins, which are formations of mushroom-shaped rock pinnacles, some as tall as several yards (meters). The distinct shapes of these rocks result from an erosion-resistant layer of rock atop relatively softer sandstone. Goblin Valley State Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, also in Utah about 190 miles (310 km) to the southwest, contain some of the largest occurrences of hoodoos in the world. The park lies within the San Rafael Desert on the southeastern edge of the San Rafael Swell, north of the Henry Mountains. Utah State Route 24 passes about four miles (6.4 km) east of the park. Hanksville lies 12 miles (19 km) to the south.

Arches National Park is a national park in eastern Utah, United States. The park is adjacent to the Colorado River, 4 mi (6 km) north of Moab, Utah. More than 2,000 natural sandstone arches are located in the park, including the well-known Delicate Arch, as well as a variety of unique geological resources and formations. The park contains the highest density of natural arches in the world.The park consists of 310.31 km2 (76,680 acres; 119.81 sq mi; 31,031 ha) of high desert located on the Colorado Plateau. The highest elevation in the park is 5,653 ft (1,723 m) at Elephant Butte, and the lowest elevation is 4,085 ft (1,245 m) at the visitor center. The park receives an average of less than 10 in (250 mm) of rain annually. Administered by the National Park Service, the area was originally named a national monument on April 12, 1929, and was redesignated as a national park on November 12, 1971. The park received more than 1.8 million visitors in 2021. From April 1 through October 31, 2023, a timed entry reservation is required to visit the park between the hours of 7 a.m. and 4 p.m.

Salt Lake City (SLC), often shortened to Salt Lake, is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, the city is the core of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which had a population of 1,257,936 at the 2020 census. Salt Lake City is further situated within a larger metropolis known as the Salt Lake City–Ogden–Provo Combined Statistical Area, a corridor of contiguous urban and suburban development stretched along a 120-mile (190 km) segment of the Wasatch Front, comprising a population of 2,746,164 (as of 2021 estimates), making it the 22nd largest in the nation. It is also the central core of the larger of only two major urban areas located within the Great Basin (the other being Reno, Nevada). Salt Lake City was founded on July 24, 1847 by early pioneer settlers led by Brigham Young who were seeking to escape persecution they had experienced while living farther east. The Mormon pioneers, as they would come to be known, entered a semi-arid valley and immediately began planning and building an extensive irrigation network which could feed the population and foster future growth. Salt Lake City's street grid system is based on a standard compass grid plan, with the southeast corner of Temple Square (the area containing the Salt Lake Temple in downtown Salt Lake City) serving as the origin of the Salt Lake meridian. Owing to its proximity to the Great Salt Lake, the city was originally named Great Salt Lake City. In 1868, the word "Great" was dropped from the city's name.Immigration of international members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), mining booms, and the construction of the first transcontinental railroad initially brought economic growth, and the city was nicknamed "The Crossroads of the West". It was traversed by the Lincoln Highway, the first transcontinental highway, in 1913. Two major cross-country freeways, I-15 and I-80, now intersect in the city. The city also has a belt route, I-215. Salt Lake City has developed a strong tourist industry based primarily on skiing, outdoor recreation, and religious tourism. It hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics and is a candidate city for the 2030 Winter Olympics. It is known for its politically liberal culture, which stands in contrast with the rest of the state's highly conservative leanings. It is home to a significant LGBT community and hosts the annual Utah Pride Festival. It is the industrial banking center of the United States. Salt Lake City and the surrounding area are also the location of several institutions of higher education including the state's flagship research school, the University of Utah. Sustained drought in Utah has more recently strained Salt Lake City's water security and caused the Great Salt Lake level drop to record low levels, and has impacted the local and state economy.