Approximately 612,000 adults in Utah today experience a disability, a statistic that is roughly 27%, or one in four adults in the state, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. While the Americans with Disabilities Act was signed into law 36 years ago on July 26, 1990, Park City has made several contributions over the years in making accessibility and inclusion part of everyday life.

“In its purest form, accessibility is a system in place that provides an equitable experience for all users,” notes a piece from the University of Utah’s Housing and Residential Education program. From residents to tourists alike, accessibility creates equal opportunities and experiences, ranging from recreational experiences to housing. 

In Park City, Park West led efforts to get people with physical disabilities on skis, with a clinic led by Hal O’Leary in 1981. Beverly Carhart noted that the only barrier for people to join would be a lack of opportunity, telling The Park Record in 1982, “anyone can ski if they can roll into my office, we can teach them to ski.”

The program gave participants confidence in addition to a fun new activity. Said one new skier: “If I can do this, I can do anything.” That same year, Developmental Disabilities, Inc. came to Park City and was running its special education and care program from the Marsac School basement, with goals to grow into its own space and serve all of Summit County. It was the first time the Parkites and their county neighbors had easy and direct access to specialized education and care for their children with disabilities.

The National Ability Center (originally the Park City Handicapped Sports Association, or PCHSA) started in the home of Meeche White and Pete Badewitz. Learn more about their growth to become the National Ability Center by visiting parkcityhistory.org/making-a-difference.

By 1988, PCHSA hosted its first “Learn to Ski” event with instructor training, followed by “hands-on instruction” for disabled individuals, which drew over 300 people. From there, the summer cycling program began and the first outdoor camping trip was planned. Then in 1989, they hosted the first Huntsman Cup Alpine Ski Race, and the Equestrian program officially began.

Park City’s Special Olympic and Paralympic journey started in 1974, when it hosted the State Directors of the Special Olympics conference, where Eunice Kennedy Shriver complimented the state in adding winter sports to its program for its athletes. There, a seed was planted, and it grew into hosting the 1984 Utah Winter Special Olympics. We hosted again in 1985 just prior to the International Special Olympics Winter Games coming to town — as we covered in a previous article — for the third-ever rendition of the international Games. 

A few years later in 1992, Meeche White took a team of six Special Olympians to Schladming, Austria, to participate in the International Special Olympics Winter Games, the first time in the history of the Special Olympics that American athletes traveled outside the country to compete. The NAC has continued to develop and support athletes training for summer and winter Special Olympics and Paralympic Games.

Housing and access to public spaces are often a major hurdle for people with disabilities. Park City is home to hundreds of historical buildings, and so a careful balance of accessibility needs and maintaining the integrity of a historic structure is required. Park City’s Design Guidelines for Historic Districts and Historic Sites point out that “the goal is to achieve the highest level of accessibility with the lowest impact on the historic structure.” They go on to explain that barrier-free access should be provided in a way that promotes independence “to the highest degree practicable,” while also preserving character-defining features of historic buildings.

Any new construction of public buildings and businesses is required to meet full ADA standards, and Park City has also seen the development of housing specifically for people with disabilities. The Bridge 21 housing development was completed in 2024 to provide a tailored space for neurodiverse adults looking to live on their own.

In tourism and business, Park City has grown to provide accessibility in leisure and in the job market. Recently, Wheel the World — a company known as a trusted standard for verified accessibility in travel — verified 30 Park City spaces as accessible to those with different abilities. Park City is also a city that provides significant employment for people with physical, mental, and psychiatric disabilities, from the ski resorts to Lucky Ones Coffee and beyond.

While the introduction of the ADA in 1990 changed a variety of everyday aspects, like wider doorways and automatic door openers, Park City has shown that additional deeper, positive changes are always possible.

This article was made possible by preliminary research by Jackie Edwards.

The Park City Museum has tours and lectures all summer long. Keep apprised at parkcityhistory.org/events.

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Coal was an important resource for mining communities. Not only for the mines and their machines, but for everyone in town. Natural gas did not arrive in town until 1964. Before that, stoves used for cooking and heat in the homes and businesses relied on coal and sometimes oil.

Below are a few excerpts from a Park City Museum oral history with the Sundstrom children: Doris, Albert and Patricia, plus Patricia’s husband Robert — all of whom grew up in Park City during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. Coal was a big part of their daily lives.

On starting the stove in the morning:

Albert: My dad would get up in the morning, build a fire and get the heat going in the house. Back in my room, the bedroom, I remember occasionally having a little frost on the wall. No heat all night long and the temperature might be down to zero or ten or twenty below and no heat. It could get cold. My job was to make sure we had wood — kindling wood — and I would get the coal into the house. We had a coal bucket to get the coal into the house. Dad had coal delivered to the coal shed and we’d have to keep it locked because there was [sic] neighbors that liked to borrow your coal during the night. It would stay padlocked all the time.

On using the stoves every day:

Robert: We lived up high up on Woodside so we could look out over the city. Everybody is cooking or heating their home with coal. Coal puts off a heavy black soot. In the winter this town would have a layer of coal soot and all black hanging over it. If there wasn’t a storm, it would just hang over the city.

Patricia: With the coal-burning stove in the kitchen that was the way that Mom did all of her baking and cooking… She had to keep that stove at a fairly even temperature. She knew how much wood or how much coal to put in the stove to get her bread baked.

And yes, every day means in the summer too:

Robert: Keep in mind, talking about heating the home and cooking on these coal stoves. In the summertime when it’s 70-75 degrees, they still had to have those stoves going to cook. No central air conditioning.

Albert: I remember converting that old coal stove so it would burn oil. [Dad] built a tray so the oil — fuel oil — would run down this tray to heat the hot water during the summer months. I don’t know if that worked very long. I remember him doing that to heat oil, so we didn’t have to burn coal during the summer.

But never mind the heat, coal is a dirty source of fuel:

Doris: I was thinking about the stove. There were leftover remnants from the burning of the coal in the hood. The stove underneath had an area where the soot, the ashes, and Dad would have to put newspaper underneath the stove, and out in front of the stove a bit. He had a little tool that had maybe a three-foot handle on it. He’d reach to the back and scoop the soot out onto the newspaper and hopefully get wrapped up and put into the garbage can. This had to be done to so the air could withdraw. That was a black, dirty project.

Patricia: [Mom] would wash all the walls down in the house twice a year. She had to due to the [stove]. She was very meticulous about not allowing the walls to get bad.

Albert: Where the wallpaper was [sic] they used a wallpaper paste. Do you remember that? Instead of water and rags, it was a paste and the dirty paste would just come off the walls and hit the floor.

Patricia: It was like silly putty.

Albert: Then the train would come up and it would blow out black smoke because they used coal in that. It would blow out little pieces. You couldn’t look up or you would get like a little sand piece in your eye.

The coal gave, but it was also a burden. In its pre-skiing days, Park City was a dirty town between the mine tailings and the coal soot from homes, mines, and trains.

Learn more about coal’s importance to the mining industry in a virtual Park City Museum lecture given by Donovan Symonds on Wednesday, February 10 at 5 p.m. To see the Sundstrom oral history and other history resources, visit the Museum’s Hal Compton Research Library.

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When thinking about film in Park City, most people imagine the Sundance Film Festival, or perhaps the Egyptian Theater, but Park City has a history of being a filming location for several films. One of those films is a made-for-TV adaption of H.G. Wells’ 1895 novella “The Time Machine.”

On May 11, 1978, The Park Record reported that Sunn Classic Pictures “will begin filming H.G. Wells’ ‘Time Machine’ Monday, and part of the movie will be shot on Main Street in Park City.”

The novella is a story that plays with time travel, including arrival in an 1871 California Gold Rush town, for which the crew transformed Park City into the shooting location. The Park Record continued, noting “parts of Main Street will be converted to an old western town May 30 and 31. … Areas expected to undergo the change include from the Claimjumper to the Chamber of Commerce, the front of Rosie’s Delicatessen, Western Woodlands to the Park Record office, and the inside of the Mother Lode.” Old City Hall, the Park City Museum’s home, is featured prominently in several shots.

The Park Record noted that sidewalks would be covered by platforms to make boardwalks, windows and storefronts would be “dressed” to give a western aesthetic, and the interior of the Mother Lode would be converted into an old saloon. The crew would also film at the Silver King Mine for futuristic scenes after more time traveling.

Not only was a production crew present with workers and actors, but Parkites were expected to join in as extras and such. Sam Baldoni, assistant to Sunn Classic Pictures VP George Conway (the film’s producer), told The Park Record they “would like very much to use as many locals as we can.” A fundraiser, the Park City Sports-A-Rama, was even giving away “1 walk-on part” in the film as a prize for their raffle.

Sunn Classic Pictures was based in Park City from its founding in 1971 until shutting down in 1987 when its parent company was bought. They utilized Main Street on several productions, and shot around town for the popular documentary-style feature film and television program “The Life and Times of Grizzly Adams,” along with filming productions throughout Summit and Wasatch counties. Sunn Classic had a string of deals with NBC to air their productions, including a “Classic Illustrated” series of book adaptations that encompassed “The Time Machine.”

“The Time Machine” premiered on NBC at 7 p.m. local time on Nov. 5, 1978. Not only could Parkites view the movie in their homes, but one Old Town bar was screening the film as well.

End Run, located in an historic home at 136 Heber Ave., where the Gateway Center sits today, advertised themselves as a “video bar” with multiple large-screen TVs with cable and video players. They could screen live sports and programs, along with movies on VHS tapes (which had arrived in the U.S. in 1977, just the year prior). For us now, it sounds like no big deal to have big screen TVs playing sports or to play a movie for bar patrons, but the End Run was truly a novelty in 1978, especially in a small town like Park City.

Learn more about film and theaters in Park City in the Park City Museum’s exhibits or Hal Compton Research Library.

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