Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner. If you picked “less than a week” in the pool for when the new traffic island on 248 would claim its first victim, you won. UDOT just finished installing, or reinstalling, a random traffic island in the middle of S.R. 248 a week or so ago.
It’s a nicely done chunk of concrete in the middle of the road that must serve some purpose but it’s not clear what. On either end of the concrete obstacle, they put up a warning sign. The signs are the bumblebee striped rectangles, mounted at a height that is only visible if you are driving a cement truck. If you are in anything that sits closer to the ground, the sign is way above the roof of your car. When you are close enough to see it, the sign is only visible through the sun roof.
Anyway, in less than a week, somebody smacked into it. From the looks of it, they hit it pretty hard. The sign on the westbound lane is broken off, and there are shards of somebody’s grill, bumper and lights scattered all about.
I hope nobody got hurt, as it was obviously a solid impact to break off the signpost and smash up the car. On the other hand, there aren’t many times of day when traffic is moving fast enough on 248 to do major damage. So let’s hope all is well, other than dealing with the insurance company. A little bump can do several thousand dollars damage to a car.
The warning sign has been down for a couple of days, leaving the concrete curb in the middle of the road unmarked. Safety first, eventually. So there may be more victims to come. It’s not in the traffic lane, and drivers paying attention ought to be able to avoid it. But nobody really expects to find a concrete curb dropped in the middle of the road for no apparent reason, and swerving to miss a deer or an over-width excavator on the road puts it right in play. Who said commuting is boring?
Driving around here is becoming quite a challenge. The other day it occurred to me that we are marking construction zones all wrong. The default position really should be that the road is torn up and unpredictable, with open trenches and utility stuff sticking up on the shoulder. The abnormal condition that we should be warned about is those rare spots where the highway is unmolested and the normal traffic lanes are open and functional (with conflicting lane marking stripes going off in all directions). Maybe we could save a lot of money on orange barrels if we marked the places that aren’t under construction instead.
In the rest of Utah, this is the big “Days of ’47” celebration. Donald Trump, the 47th president, probably thinks it must be about him. It’s not. It marks the anniversary of Brigham Young’s arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, which was part of Mexico at the time. “Bienvenido a nuestra casa, senior Brigham.”
In the 179 years since those first pioneers arrived, there have been a lot of changes. They learned how to build cities in the desert, make it complicated to buy a drink, blocked all the roads with endless construction, all to lay the groundwork to make a $32 million condo at the Four Seasons possible.
The event is largely ignored in Park City. Kamas puts on a very nice celebration, a week-long affair on a fun, small-town scale. There’s a car show, parade, rodeos, the famous demolition derby, and best of all, lawn mower racing.
Of all the options Park City has considered for the 5-acre Bonanza Drive property, over more than a decade, I don’t think they have given lawn mower racing proper consideration. There is plenty of room for an interesting track (and plenty of orange cones to mark it with). With the loss of Sundance, the city needs another event.
But while Park City dithers, Kamas will emerge as the lawn mower racing capital of the Wasatch Back. Snooze you lose.
Aside for being a good excuse for a barbecue, Pioneer Day is important. It’s really good to spend a little time reflecting on what went before us. Somebody cut a road down Parley’s Canyon with an ax and shovel long before there was a freeway to facilitate our commuter society.
Everything has something that went before it, and something before that. Utah has a uniquely weird history, with the pioneers arriving here because they were invited to leave the United States at gunpoint. They came here, fled to here, seeking separation and isolation. They built towns all over in the most unlikely places, and for a generation, ran their own show.
The United States took the West from Mexico by force, and the pioneers found themselves back in the U.S. whether they wanted to be or not. Then came the railroad and mining, and finally, after 50 years, statehood.
The state was built by immigration. My little town of Woodland was amazingly cosmopolitan. There were literally families from pole to pole, with South Africans and Norwegians living next door, and a chowder of different languages.
Pioneer Day is deserving of celebration.
Tom Clyde practiced law in Park City for many years. He lives on a working ranch in Woodland and has been writing this column since 1986.