Midway’s Swiss Days preparation is in full swing with Labor Day weekend fast approaching. 

Max Willis is the Swiss Days committee chair. He has been working to bring Swiss Days to life each year for 25 years, though he only became chair of the committee in recent years. 

“We pull this thing off every year,” Willis said. 

Willis, who spent time in Switzerland as a child, said he loves the Swiss tradition Midway brings to town each year. 

“I heard about the event, and I volunteered, and I just fell in love with it from day one,” Willis said. 

The Swiss Days committee does not advertise for the event; it’s entirely word-of-mouth. Over the past 25 years, Willis said he has seen the event grow from a humble gathering to a somewhat overwhelming festival. 

“The scale and different activities we do around Swiss Days has changed a little over the years,” Willis said. “If you don’t like crowds, it’s probably not your favorite thing to do.”

Willis said Swiss Days is a nod to the end of summer, ushering in autumn. Swiss Days began in 1947 as the harvest festival. There would be apples and fall-themed produce and trinkets for sale over the years. 

The festival changed to Swiss Days more than 15 years later. Throughout the years, the focus of Swiss Days has remained true: community. 

“What I love about it is it’s a volunteer force of about 3,000 in the community that comes together,” Willis said. 

Elise Jones is the social media lead for Swiss Days. She said that even online, the Wasatch Back community has been coming together over Swiss Days. She said this year there has been plenty of engagement with Swiss Days both online and offline. 

Like Willis, Jones said the community aspect of the festival is the best part. Everyone volunteers, she said, from community cooks who start barbecuing a week ahead to women from wards of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who bake and prepare Swiss bread and treats. 

“Everyone’s just coming together every single day to pull it together and, behind the scenes, it’s magical,” Jones said. 

As of Tuesday, tents are being raised, baking is in its final stretch and smoke is coming from barbecues in Midway. 

“You can smell the fresh Swiss bread baking from the cannery building,” Jones said. “It’s really fun.”

Jones said there is also a larger emphasis on handmade crafts and goods this year, and it’s a great way to connect with makers across the Wasatch Back. Willis added that a good portion of visitors start their holiday shopping early at Swiss Days. 

Willis and Jones said that while Swiss Days is an epic festival, what people may not know is that the event is also a massive fundraiser. 

“They just see trinkets that are being sold, they hear the music, they see the crowds, they see the food,” Willis said. “When vendors pay for their space to rent out that location, those proceeds go to alleviate suffering around the world.”

Willis said his team has heard “tremendous stories” come in over the years about the fundraising that was accomplished. 

“They raise money for Midway and the humanitarian department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and that goes to aid suffering all over the world,” Willis said. 

Profits are split between Midway Boosters to pay for local events and the church’s humanitarian efforts. Locally, Swiss Days helps fund classic Midway events such as the annual tree lighting ceremony each winter. 

Beautification has also been completed on Midway’s Main Street, and scholarships are awarded to local high school students seeking to further their education. 

“It comes from Swiss Days money,” Willis said. 

Jones said she loves that everyone is working toward a “good cause.”

“And knowing that the money is going to something very real and very helpful to not only our own community, but outside of our own community out there in the world,” Jones said. “All the food and the boosters merchandise booth and things like that, those proceeds go to the fundraiser, so that’s what makes it really nice.”

The festival will start on Friday and the annual Swiss Days parade will be at 10 a.m. on Saturday.

The post Swiss Days remains true to its community roots appeared first on Park Record.

Over the past year, a miniature European village coined Southill in Midway has come to life under the vision of developer Dan Luster. Part of that vision includes two restaurants — Montblu and Charolais — but that wasn’t always the plan, Luster admitted. Then he met chef Steven Fretz.

Fretz is a career chef in the fine dining world, most recently known for his “baby,” Coast Range, a high-end steakhouse in Solvang, California, which has been in the Michelin Guide for four consecutive years. But he actually got his start in the Wasatch Back.

“When I graduated high school, me and my best friends moved to Park City and worked at Deer Valley,” he said. “We got jobs as prep cooks in the kitchen cooking 500 pounds of live Dungeness crab. We were just these kids, man. Super high energy. The chefs loved us.”

That move to Utah from his home in Oregon wasn’t entirely new, Fretz said. He lived in Salt Lake City from 7 to 11, and his mom’s side has long held roots in the Heber Valley. 

“My grandparents are buried in Heber Cemetery, so we would come up to Heber all the time. Swiss Days, come up all the time. My uncle Dick still has Dick’s Barber Shop on Main Street in Heber. We’d always come up, see Uncle Dick, get a haircut,” Fretz said. “My great-grandmother ran The Hub.”

After that first gig at Deer Valley Resort, Fretz spent another three winters working in kitchens in Park City. But what really catapulted Fretz’s career was a conversation with a guest chef while he was a line cook at the Stein Eriksen Lodge.

The chef from San Francisco saw Fretz’s work ethic and gave him a nudge.

“I didn’t ever want to become a chef. It was just something I was good at,” Fretz admitted. “I went to culinary school because some chef that I thought was really badass said, ‘You need to move to San Francisco and go to culinary school.’ I was like, ‘OK,’ and so I did.”

He didn’t just attend school; he excelled. He graduated from the California College of the Arts with a 4.2 GPA and a literal star with his name on the campus sidewalk: the Daniel Carlisle Walker Award for culinary excellence. He landed an externship at the Fifth Floor with chef George Morrone, who historically didn’t accept interns, because the college’s chef personally called in a favor. 

Fretz said he just went along, kept his head down and worked hard, and maybe that’s what set him apart? 

But after years of working for others and helping open restaurants around the country, the natural progression was to start his own project.

First he had The Church Key, which opened on Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills in 2012 — “an epic time,” he said. Then, when the pandemic hit and he moved up to Solvang near Santa Barbara, California, he and a few friends bought and built out a restaurant that would become Coast Range.

Solvang, like Park City, is a very transient population with intense busy seasons October through February, Fretz said. And like Midway, its charm comes from its European, specifically Danish, architecture and culture. 

Now that Coast Range runs itself, Fretz said he was ready for his next thing.

Utah has always been home despite the chef’s 30 years living in California, so when he decided to start another project, to “nest,” Fretz knew he wanted to be back in the state. 

That’s when he met Luster.

“Dan and I started really bonding: him admiring my craziness and my craft, and then me admiring his craziness and his craft,” Fretz said. “It just meshed together.”

Luster, a self-described activist, said his philosophy in preserving Midway’s charm is to control the inevitable development and growth. Take the sheep pasture right outside Montblu along Midway’s Main Street, which used to be an auto shop:

“This is now America’s most expensive sheep pasture. I had to pay full price, like $2.5 million, for the auto shop, buy it like I was going to run it as a business. And then we took it down, and now it’s a sheep pasture,” Luster said.

The sheep are Swiss, Valais Blacknose to be specific, to appease Midway’s chosen character, Luster joked. In reality, the original settlers of Midway were English, hence his Cotswolds-inspired neighborhood.

That desire to keep projects in line with the city’s existing charm is why Luster ultimately decided to keep ownership of the two restaurants, which were built to meet a city requirement for commercial space.

“I had no intention of owning restaurants. The business model was to have pads and sell them off,” he said. “A few (buyers) came along, and it just didn’t fit, and we were unwilling to just list them and sell them because it’s so critical to the whole vibe of not only the village, but Midway generally.”

So Montblu and Charolais were born: the first a more casual breakfast and lunch spot, the latter meant to be a high-end French steakhouse.

“Montblu, it’s whimsical. It’s sheep,” said Luster, gesturing to the pasture abutting the cafe’s patio, “and even some of the recipes are going to be kind of fun. Charolais the steakhouse, I can say, without too much hubris, I think it’ll be the top-rated restaurant in the entire state.”

He and Fretz both say they want Charolais to be to Salt Lake City what The French Laundry is to San Francisco: a top-tier restaurant in a more rural, surrounding area. 

“If we’re going to shape (the growth), what are we going to be? Are we going to be high-elevation Orem, just fill it in, or are we going to be Carmel or Southampton or Yountville?” said Luster. “I see Midway as those places in embryo.”

Fretz said he’s shooting for Michelin recognition again now that inspectors consider Utah for the Southwest guide. 

“People want something unique. They want something that has soul,” said Luster. “Our obsession and level of detail. It’s Fretz, like it’s a perfect fit.”

With Charolais, expected to open in fall 2027, Luster and Fretz are dreaming big, especially since they’re building the restaurant from the ground up. 

“I was like, ‘Dan, can we make a cheese aging cave?’ He’s like, ‘I don’t see why not.’ So it’s right next to the wine cave, and I was like, ‘Can we make the wine cave bigger?’ So he made it twice as big,” Fretz said. 

As construction on Charolais finishes, the chef said he’s focusing on Montblu, which should open this fall.

As Luster said, Montblu is a whimsical space, with a cartoony logo of a Valais Blacknose sheep on the sign, sandwich paper and napkins. 

While it’s more playful, the food is still very serious, Fretz said. Everything will be made in-house, from the breads to the foie gras pâté. And for those who know him, Fretz is bringing his “chefy” brown-butter glazed, triple-fermented brioche doughnut, which goes with him wherever he works.

“My favorite things to cook are things that are technique-driven, technique-based,” said Fretz. “The gratin fries take two days. The bread takes three days. So it’s all very thoughtful.”

For example, instead of a turkey sandwich with sliced deli meat, Fretz makes a turkey terrine: paper-thin layers of turkey and white truffle cheese pressed overnight. Each sandwich is made from its own miniature loaf of brioche bread and dressed with a pecan gremolata and an aioli. Instead of simple French fries on the side, it’s served with gratin fries made of stacks of sliced potatoes, cut into thick blocks, then fried and topped with flaky French salt.

Fretz said, in honor of their sheep neighbors, Montblu will never have lamb on the menu.

The chef has permanently relocated to Midway, a kind of return to his heritage, which he calls “serendipitous.” He remembers visiting the hot springs or coming up for Swiss Days as a kid. Now he’s returned, but not empty-handed.

“I got to bring the fine-dining aspect of how I’ve been trained to Midway,” Fretz said. “It is a bit of coming home to, like, this is it. I’m not going anywhere else. I’m not opening restaurants anywhere else. … For a chef, this is a dream come true.”

The post Southill partners with Michelin-rated chef for Montblu, Charolais restaurants  appeared first on Park Record.

Heber City Americana musician Alicia Stockman was driving home after a horrible house show in Dallas when her engine block cracked and began leaking coolant into the oil, which may as well have been a terminal diagnosis for her car. She “limped” her way to a Kia dealership in Grand Junction, Colorado, where she called her ex-boyfriend and parents, in tears and beside herself. 

“I was 36 at the time. I was not a young kid. I was a full-ass grown adult,” she joked. “My parents came and picked me up, and we towed my car home, and I sold it for salvage. It was this dark window of time when everything was upended, and I didn’t know what to do.”

Stockman had been contemplating a move to Nashville, Tennessee, but at that moment, she realized she wanted nothing more than to be safe at home in Heber City. 

“The whole point of leaving was to run away from my problems. Then, coming home, (I had) no other (option) but to face them head-on and be upset,” she said. 

The experience inspired the title track on her latest album, “Homebound.” The album’s lyrics, which Stockman wrote between 2021 and 2026, explore break-ups, bowling and, most often, place. 

For example, “Jerkwater Town” is an ode to a small town and its residents who refuse to abandon it. Though it mentions a train and “our own Dairy Queen,” bringing local favorites like the Heber Valley Railroad and Dairy Keen to mind, Stockman actually wrote it about an artsy town of 2,000 people in West Texas called Marfa.

“Marfa is a weird word, and no one knew what I was talking about, so I took it out of the song, which, at the end of the day, serves it better. I’ve had people from all over be like, ‘This is my hometown you’re talking about,’” she said.

Meanwhile, “League Night” is indisputably an ode to Heber City’s Holiday Lanes. 

“Growing up in Heber, it was every birthday party, every gathering. … My boyfriend is in the league on Tuesday nights in the winter, which is 34 weeks long. That is almost a human child’s gestation period,” she joked. “I’d spend a lot of time there being like, ‘This is such a vintage vibe. It’s so weird. It’s got so much character.’”

The track’s been a hit at shows, so much so that one family showed up to a concert in Layton in matching bowling shirts. 

“Bowling is like Dolly Parton. It brings everyone together,” Stockman said. 

But “League Night” hasn’t been nearly as much of a crowd-pleaser as the album’s closer, “Crimson Blues.”

“I would not know which song to end a set with, and I’d be like, ‘Do you guys want to hear a song about murder or bowling?’” she said. “You would think there would be more debate, but 98% of the people not requested, screamed the word, ‘Murder!’”

“Crimson Blues,” Stockman explained, is a clapback to bluegrass murder ballads.

“They’re all in major keys, and they’re just fun, upbeat songs about killing women for various reasons that aren’t very compelling,” she said. “This is … my unhinged, slightly psychotic, true crime-loving murder ballad.”

Moving from bowling to a murder ballad in the span of a few tracks is a reflection of Stockman’s growth as a songwriter in the five years since her last album, “These Four Walls.”

“The rule of thumb is you have to write 100 songs before you really have your voice,” she said. 

Stockman feels she finally found that in “September.” She’s particularly proud of the lyric, “The first frost feels like closure, nature’s way of starting over. The woman I’ll be next fall, will I know her?”

Stockman’s voice, she said, is more “pedestrian” than “poetic.” She uses visual imagery to paint scenes of particular moments in her life or conversations she’s had. 

Stockman’s growth in the past five years hasn’t been restricted to her songwriting. She’s also become more comfortable identifying as an artist instead of just “someone who plays music on the weekends.” These days, musicianship is her primary source of income, despite the fact that she doesn’t put too much effort into her social media presence and barely pays attention to her streaming statistics. 

“It’s been a really weird space to navigate, to release a record in this day and age of AI and Ticketmaster and all that stuff,” Stockman said.

Her focus has been playing shows, selling merch and making in-person connections with fans and fellow musicians. 

“(A fan) emailed me to tell me that he had to get an MRI. They asked him what he wanted to listen to, and he picked my music to help calm him while he was there,” she said. “That’s worth all the Spotify streaming numbers.”

Stockman’s work has been especially focused on her hometown. She started a house concert series as an incubator for local and touring musicians and hopes to launch songwriting workshops. 

Stockman’s determination to move to Nashville a few years ago was driven by her desire to be part of its music scene and explore more of the world outside of Utah.

“I live one block from where I went to kindergarten. There were many times when I wrestled with the idea of feeling ashamed about living in my hometown still. It’s a pretty small town, or it was. So, 17-year-old me was really disappointed in mid-30s me for not going anywhere,” she said.

But Stockman has realized she doesn’t need to move to a music mecca; she can create one where she grew up. 

“Once I embraced it, it changed things for me, and I started to build community in a way that I think I had been kind of avoiding,” she said. “I am on a mission to force my friendship any time I meet a new musician in the area. … What those cities have that we don’t have as well is that networking and that cohesiveness.”

Though Stockman has lived in Wasatch and Summit counties her entire life, it wasn’t until the last few years that she finally felt at home.

“The theme that I say about the record is, ‘Home is big enough to hold all the versions of yourself,’” she said. “Coming home, you can be who you were before and who you’ve become now. You don’t have to pick one or the other.”

Stockman’s next local shows are at Heber City Main Street Park on Thursday, and on Aug. 29 and 30, Le Depot Brasserie in Park City on Sept. 4 and St. Lawrence Catholic Church in Heber City on Sept. 12. Learn more at aliciastockman.com.

The post Heber City musician Alicia Stockman finally comes home appeared first on Park Record.

Tucked away in the Wasatch County Parks and Recreation building during the annual Fair Days event was an array of projects with no common denominator other than that they were made, grown or baked by hand. There were countless cakes, a crocheted, two-foot-tall dragon and a 51,300-piece puzzle laid out on several tables assembled by seniors from the Wasatch County Senior Center.

The 29-by-7 foot masterpiece took five months to assemble and depicts 27 wonders of the world, from the Statue of Liberty to the Taj Mahal. 

The puzzle is far from the only contribution the Senior Center made to the Fair Days exhibition, which showcases and judges community talent in categories ranging from horticulture to arts and crafts. In total, the county’s seniors submitted 109 exhibits, earning 16 first-place ribbons, according to Candie Bonner, activities coordinator for the Senior Center.

Heber City senior citizen Sharon Michael won a first-place ribbon in acrylic painting for her depiction of a hunched-over king vulture. 

“When you get old, you develop some things,” she said — namely, “talent.”

When Michael started painting in a course at the Senior Center last year, she whined through the entire class. She found herself apologizing to the teacher when she realized her wildlife paintings turned out surprisingly well. 

The Senior Center offers a wide array of classes — tap dance, tai chi, watercolor painting and pool, to name a few. It also organizes get-togethers at concerts, plays and restaurants. The seniors even visited Strawberry Reservoir recently to watch a fish hatchery release 10,000 trout.

“(The Senior Center does) a tremendous amount to include all the senior citizens that have varied interests,” Michael said. 

Bonner is the force behind the classes and events. A Fair Days exhibitor herself, Bonner began encouraging seniors to participate a few years ago after noticing how proud they were of what they were making in classes.

“The talent of our senior community is amazing, and sometimes, I feel like they get overlooked. So, it’s been really neat to see them come and share their talent,” she said. 

Heber City resident Nancy Geisler said the Senior Center’s handling of the submission process makes it easy to participate.

Geisler has sewn her entire life. This Fair Days, she won a first-place award for a folding screen. Inside the oak frame, she sewed an intricate pattern using white thread and a technique called net darning. 

“It’s not as tedious as cross-stitching. It’s kind of the same thing because you’re working in squares, but it goes faster,” Geisler explained.

Meanwhile, Midway senior Cheryl Long made quilts with her granddaughters, Evalyn, 7, and Teagan, 9. The girls chose fabrics patterned with ice cream cones and hummingbirds, respectively. 

“I loved it. It was tedious for them at different points,” Long joked.

For Bonner, the appeal of the Fair Days exhibits is their celebration of talents that can be considered “a forgotten art.”

“It’s just awesome to see people remembering how to preserve food, how to hand-make quilts,” she said.

Bonner’s first Fair Days exhibit was a bookmark she submitted when she was 5 years old. This year, she submitted various canned goods, from jams to chicken, and floral arrangements. 

“It’s a good place to gather, to share your talents, to have joy,” she said about the Fair Days exhibition. “(For) the senior community … to remember, ‘I have talents. I can do these things and share them with people.’”

The post Seniors sweep awards for Wasatch County Fair Days exhibits appeared first on Park Record.

Midway resident Brent Kelly, a rodeo announcer of over 50 years, got his start in the sport by watching the Wasatch County Rodeo, now called the Mountain Valley Stampede Rodeo, as a kid.

As a teenager, he’d sneak onto organizer Swanny Kirby’s property to ride his calves, but he never snuck into the event itself.

“The rodeo used to be put on by the Heber Valley Riding Club. And they would patrol the fences so that none of the kids would get in free,” he said. “(My friend) Tom (Whitaker) said, ‘Remember when we pushed over that snow fence, and all of us ran in and got in free?’ I said, ‘Tom, I don’t remember that. I don’t think I was there. I always paid my ticket.’”

Ahead of the Mountain Valley Stampede Rodeo this weekend, Brent recounted its history at the Wasatch County Library during the latest in a series of local history lectures. 

The rodeo began as an outgrowth of the Wasatch County Fair, which began in 1913.

“In the 20th century, local farmers, ranchers, 4-H groups, they got together and they showed livestock, they showed crops, they showed produce,” Brent said. “The fair (was) both competitive and a community celebration reflecting the most important part of farming to Wasatch County.”

The rodeo began sometime in the 1920s as an amateur event for kids and families. It got an upgrade when Kirby took over, the first of several organizers to transform the rodeo into a professional event. 

The first local rodeo clown was Ellis Clyde. A photo of his goofy expression sent a wave of laughter through the audience of seniors who recognized him. 

“Ellis always had a float in the parade,” Brent said. “He would ride down Main Street dressed as a woman, bra on the outside, playing a saxophone. And he had a band, the Ellis Clyde Band, and they used to play every Friday and Saturday night at the old social hall.”

After several iterations of stock contractors running the rodeo, the county asked Brent, his wife, Mary, and local Bob McPhie to take the reins in the 1970s. 

“We’ve been involved in rodeo pretty much all of our married lives. So when Bob asked us to come work with him, it was really an honor,” Mary said. “We had the same vision. We wanted to make it one of the best.”

The trio renamed it the Mountain Valley Stampede Rodeo, which has evolved into the three-day event today. 

The Wasatch County Event Complex opened in 2005, its 7,000-seat outdoor arena opened in 2009, and its warm-up arena and livestock stalls were added in 2011.

“Wasatch is second to none in facilities that we have,” Brent said.

There has also been growth in the amount of prize money given out. Wasatch County Event Complex Director Jon Provost took over the rodeo about 20 years ago. At that time, the winners received about $40,000 total. At the rodeo this weekend, the county will distribute more than $200,000 in awards, generated from ticket sales and sponsorships.

That’s in stark contrast to the prize money Wasatch County advertised in rodeo magazines from 1956 and 1957 — about $700, or roughly $8,700 when adjusted for inflation.

There are nearly 500 competitors at this year’s event. Brent and Mary said it is the prize money that attracts National Finals Rodeo athletes.

“When you get them here, you sell out your crowds,” Mary said.

Members of the crowd at the library chimed in that it is not the professional athletes, but the amateur, hometown heroes who inspired them the most.

Brent and Mary, who received Gov. Spencer Cox’s Utah Treasure award last year for their involvement in the rodeo, could be considered two of those heroes. 

Brent became a competitor in calf roping, bareback riding and bulldogging while he was a student at Brigham Young University. Brent and Mary spent their years as a newly married couple constantly on road trips so Brent could compete in Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association events. 

They funneled their paychecks into entry fees, or what they called “donations,” because Brent wasn’t winning any competitions.

“I was donating every weekend. Finally, one time, she says, ‘I don’t care what you do, just catch the calf!’ It took me about 20 seconds that time, but I caught it,” Brent joked. 

Brent’s love for the sport but inability to make a living competing in it is what led him to become a rodeo announcer. 

“I drive into a rodeo in a white shirt. I go up to a box that’s air-conditioned. And when I leave, I have a check and a hamburger,” he said, a grin plastered on his face. 

He’s announced at various rodeos across the state over the past half-century, including 20 years at the Mountain Valley Stampede Rodeo. There, he began his tradition of announcing on horseback in the arena. He and his 26-year-old horse, Cash, have since hung up their spurs after many close encounters with bulls and broncos. 

In one instance, a horse mistook Brent for a pickup rider — a horseback rider who helps a competitor dismount during a rough stock competition — and chased him.

“He reached out and grabbed my belt with his mouth,” Brent said, making a chomping motion with his hand. “I felt that, and I kicked old Cash, and we went really fast that time. Cash has saved my life more than anything else.”

Brent, whose kids and grandkids are also involved in the rodeo, said the sport is “just coming into its own.”

“We’ve had more national exposure from the Cowboy Channel than anything. … There’s more money now than there used to be, which gives you more cowboys,” he said. “Back at the National High School Finals (earlier this month), they were roping calves in eight seconds. That was unheard of. If you had a 12-second run in my day, you would get a check. I never did get one, but anyway, eight seconds!”

After Brent’s presentation, Courtland Nelson, a Midway resident of 50 years, shared what he loves most about the Heber Valley’s rodeo tradition.

“There’s nothing really fun about raising pigs. There’s nothing that’s really exciting about milking cows. You can’t have cow-milking contests and have people really want to pay you to see it. And I think rodeo was the one thing that came out of those cultures,” he said. “To me, that was always a great thing about Heber Valley … that sense of the best parts of the Old West.”

The Mountain Valley Stampede Rodeo takes place Thursday through Saturday at the Wasatch County Event Complex. Learn more and purchase tickets at wasatchparksandrec.com.

The post A look inside the rowdy history of the Mountain Valley Stampede Rodeo appeared first on Park Record.

Recent passersby on Heber City’s Main Street may have noticed Midway muralist Pamela Flynn perched on a scaffold, painting the side of the Casago building. She’s only there between 6 p.m. and 2 a.m. The July heat has been a bit much to handle during the day.

“It’s, like, 105 on that concrete,” Flynn said. “The whole building is black except for the part that I am working on. The other day, I was putting on the primer, and sweat was just pouring off me.”

The odd painting schedule works perfectly fine for Flynn. She’s a night owl who’s typically up that late creating anyway. She paints animals, landscapes and occasionally her husband dressed as a mountain man, coonskin cap and all. 

Flynn’s latest project is Heber City’s newest public art installation. Funded by a $2,850 grant from the city’s Trails, Arts & Parks Tax, the mural’s goal is to “enhance downtown’s visual appeal, strengthen community identity and reinforce Main Street as a creative destination that supports local businesses and community pride,” said Rachel Kahler, executive director of the Community Alliance for Main Street, the nonprofit managing the project.

The mural, 13 feet tall and 31 feet wide, reads “Hello Heber” over a mountain landscape in orange, black and blue tones. Casago owner Jeff Harris hopes the mural serves a similar purpose to the iconic Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign.

“It’s the first mural you might see when you come into town, almost like that Las Vegas one,” he said. “The whole idea was to get people to stop and take pictures, and then develop more visibility for Heber as a tourist destination.”

Harris manages about 60 vacation rentals in the Heber Valley, which will expand to over 300 when Avari Vacation Rentals acquires the company next month. Casago has operated out of the building on Main Street for the past eight months. 

Harris has visited the Heber Valley since he was a kid. He said it’s always been a tourist destination, but with recent developments like Deer Valley East Village, visitation is booming more than ever.

“In five years, everybody’s going to have heard of Heber. I think the train’s left the station. There’s no turning that back,” he said.

In Harris’ eyes, the “Hello Heber” mural is a way to greet visitors and new residents with open arms.

“When I first moved here in 2020 … I still had a California (license plate). A guy literally accosted me in the (gas station) parking lot. He screamed and yelled at me about moving up here from California, and I wasn’t welcome here, and all this other stuff,” he said. “We want people to feel welcome here.”

Flynn was the ideal candidate to paint Harris’ vision. Her experience stretches back to childhood.

How does a child get permission to paint murals, you might ask?

“Your mom is awesome, that’s how,” Flynn said. “You’re 9, and you go, ‘Mom, can I paint on the walls of my bedroom?’ And your mom goes, ‘All right. It’s just paint.’”

So Flynn painted mermaid habitats, jungles dotted with the glow-in-the-dark eyes of predators and the covers of all her favorite Boston and Van Halen albums on her bedroom walls.

Her current bedroom is painted like a castle with bats fluttering around on the starry ceiling.

Flynn refined her skills while apprenticing under Latter-day Saint artist Linda Curley Christensen for the past decade. Christensen leads a mural-painting team for the church out of a studio in Wallsburg.

“All of these canvases are put up in a barn that’s been converted to a massive studio, and they are on these movable easels. Everything gets gridded. Everything gets put up. It all has to be OK’d first before you can even put it on there,” Flynn said. “Each one of those murals is a two-year project. They’re huge.”

Murals Flynn has worked on have been installed at temples in South Jordan, St. George, Mesa, Arizona and Tegucigalpa, Honduras.

But her favorite murals are the ones she’s painted at home, in the Midway Town Hall, Heber City Public Safety Building and Rocky Mountain Middle School.

“I lost two daughter-in-laws in the past five years. … It really put things in perspective, and it really made me say, ‘What do I want to leave behind when I’m gone?’” Flynn said. “(My husband) is always saying, ‘Honey, you left your mark on this valley.’”

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Sheila Probst Siggard’s big, red barn on nearly 8 acres in Midway has been in her family for as long as she can remember. All that time, it has been a muse for artists across the Heber Valley. 

During the Midway Art Association’s annual plein air contest, painters flock to the public roads surrounding her property to set up easels. There seems to be at least one artistic depiction of its two silos and Park City pine logs for each of the four seasons. 

“With all the development coming in Midway, I’ve thought about leaving, but I said, ‘I can’t leave my barn,’” Siggard said. 

The 73-year-old owner even considered having the barn moved to a new location, possibly by dismantling and reconstructing it. But Siggard has found another solution to preserve her barn: by establishing a conservation easement on her and her neighbors’ properties. 

The conservation easement, referred to as the Heart of Midway Project, encompasses more than 17 acres from four neighboring properties north of 250 N. and west of N. Center St.

Siggard’s idea originated when the city passed its first $5 million open space bond in 2018. It wasn’t difficult, she said, to convince her three neighbors to collaborate on the project.

“We’ve seen so many pieces of property get developed, and then there’s all the traffic and the ugliness of houses instead of a beautiful, open field,” she said. “We’re kind of old timers. We just love agriculture and hate to see Midway be destroyed. So, we want to help preserve it.”

The combined land value is appraised at about $5 million, according to Wendy Fisher, executive director of Utah Open Lands. The landowners are donating a combined $1.8 million of the cost. Three landowners are donating 25% of the cost of their land. Andrew Larson is contributing the full value of his 3-plus acres. 

“We’re not in it for the money. We’re in it for the preservation of the land,” said Phyllis Shelton, one of the landowners and Siggard’s cousin.

Shelton has been on board with her cousin’s plan since the start, agreeing before she’d even told her husband. She hasn’t had to do too much work, either. The effort has been “Sheila-driven,” she joked.

Siggard said she was the first to apply for funds for Midway’s first open space bond. In 2023, the Midway City Council committed $250,000 of those funds to the project.

Since then, the community Volksmarch fundraiser in September raised an additional $85,000. 

Midway passed its second $5 million open space bond in 2024. Fisher and the landowners approached the City Council on Tuesday, seeking $750,000 more for the Heart of Midway Project. The City Council unanimously approved the funding. 

“It’s pretty outstanding for a piece like this to be contiguous through this agreement of owners,” said City Councilor JC Simonsen.

The land is being preserved for its use by livestock and as an essential winter foraging ground for wildlife like deer. It is also being preserved for its open field views and the potential establishment of a public trail easement on Siggard’s property. The mapping of that trail will occur at a later date.

The landowners, with the assistance of Utah Open Lands, have to raise funds for the remaining $2.1 million value of the conservation easement. That could come from various federal, state and local sources, as well as private foundations. 

Fisher added that Utah Open Lands recently received approval for a Regional Conservation Partnership Program through the National Resources Conservation Service, which would have provided federal funding for projects including the Heart of Midway, but “claw(ing) back of funding” by the federal government has stalled the program.

Once the Heart of Midway conservation easement is established, the landowners will have the ability to continue to occupy and farm their land. Larson was also approved to construct a new home on his property, the details of which are to be determined.

For Siggard, finally establishing the conservation easement would mean everything. 

Her family was Swiss immigrants who lived in Midway for at least four generations. Her father raised beef cattle, and she has plenty of fond memories being his assistant, filling syringes for vaccinations and keeping the fire hot for the branding irons. 

“I remember one time there was an Angus cow. They’re very good mothers. … My dad got too close to the calf, and the cow started to chase him. My sister and I were in the barn, yelling, ‘Run, Daddy! Run!’ And he made it,” she remembered with a laugh. “Lots of good memories.”

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Midway farmer Randy Lundin’s great-grandfather established himself in the Heber Valley on just 7 acres in 1892. Today, 27 head of cows and calves, a handful of horses, foxes, coyotes, raccoons and the occasional mountain lion roam the now 119-acre property, which the Lundin family has fought to preserve through a conservation easement for the past four years. 

The process has been about as strenuous as the backbreaking labor the Lundins have performed for generations. But the project achieved a significant milestone on July 1, when the Wasatch County Council unanimously finalized a purchase agreement funding $2 million of the land’s purchase price from the county open space bond fund.

The Midway City Council in December also voted for funding its portion of the conservation easement, $1 million, coming from its open space bond fund.

The purchase can now go forward as soon as all conditions of the agreement are met.

The final condition is that the Lundin siblings settle a struggle over the property that has been in litigation since 2021. The siblings entered into a settlement agreement in May 2024 and have since been in negotiations to finalize it.

The next status hearing on the case overseen by a Fourth District judge is scheduled for Aug. 14.

The exact terms of the settlement agreement do not matter as long as they protect Wasatch County, Midway and Utah Open Lands, allowing the purchase agreement to go forward, said Wasatch County Deputy Attorney Jon Woodard.

As soon as the purchase agreement goes into effect, the Lundins will have three years to secure funding of the $4.5 million that constitutes the rest of the purchase price. They will be assisted by Utah Open Lands. 

Executive Director Wendy Fisher expected most of that funding to come from the National Resource Conservation Service. Utah Open Lands is also looking at other federal, state and local sources and private foundations, and is accepting donations.

“This was the first hurdle in what is still a long journey, so it’s been amazing to see the Lundins stay at the table,” Fisher said. “We’ll need every oar in the river to get this one done.”

If the Lundins cannot raise the $4.5 million after the three-year period ends, Wasatch County and Midway’s combined $3 million will be returned with interest, Woodard said. 

If established, the conservation easement would allow the Lundin family to continue farming the land while preserving it for future generations. 

“Development’s going on all around this, so there is a threat of imminent loss of the existing open space,” Woodard said.

The land is visible from Main Street in Heber City, Wasatch Mountain State Park and much of Midway, justifying its aesthetic importance, Woodard said.

Midway would transform a ditch running across the Lundin property into a public trail that would also serve as an emergency access and wildfire evacuation route.

Public access would also be allowed for educational tours, allowing residents to take in the echoes of the past found on the Lundin property, from a plum orchard the siblings’ great-grandfather planted over a century ago to the 10-by-10-foot brick homestead the siblings were raised in.

“It was warm in the winter. Cozy,” Randy joked.

He said establishing the conservation easement has taken longer than expected, but that he will be happy when it is finally established.

“This has been a long process. It has been emotional, and it has been trying, I think, for everyone involved,” Fisher said.

She added that the Lundin family is selling the land for less than it has been appraised for.

“This isn’t something they’re doing to make money. They’re actually going to be making a sizable contribution to the value of the conservation easement,” she said. “I think that needs to be recognized. All of these projects that we work on, really, they don’t happen unless the landowners love their land, and the Lundins love their land.”

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A cannabis shop, motel and McDonald’s in a row on Heber City Main Street. Cows grazing in the North Fields. Mount Timpanogos obscured by the wildfire-induced haze and ash that swept through the Wasatch Back last Friday. 

These are but a few of the paintings that can be found in Midway Town Hall during the Midway Art Association’s 19th annual Plein Air Paradise festival, which continues through Saturday.

Plein air is a French art form that involves painting outdoors. 

The Midway Art Association’s festival included four plein air events over the past two weeks: the main competition, in which artists must paint Wasatch and Summit counties, competitions restricted to Heber City and Midway, and a nocturne or sunrise painting competition.

The festival also has several auctions, including an auction of work artists will paint around Midway’s town square on Saturday morning.

Plein air artists combine the skill sets of visionary Vincent van Gogh and survivalist Bear Grylls. There’s a lot of preparation involved, according to Midway Art Association copresident Marge Bowen.

“A lot of artists will have wagons, but then you have to be able to roll it to where you’re going. There are easels that you can use as backpacks, so some artists are pretty compact,” she said. “Plein air artists have to be prepped to be outside in anything.”

Still, excursions sometimes turn into disasters.

“Bugs can fly into the wet paint. … If the wind kicks up, I’m telling you, a whole easel can go down. … When you’re standing outside in the North Fields, you’ll have trucks go by, and there’s a lot of dust, so you’ve got to be ready for that,” she said. “There’s lots of fun things that can go on out there.”

The festival has attracted 135 brave artists to the Wasatch Back this year. They hope to earn awards as large as $2,200 and sell their artwork along the way. They hail from nine states, some coming from as far as Florida and Hawaii. 

But many of these artists are locals, such as Heber City resident M. Scott Woodruff, who has participated in the competition for about four years. 

Woodruff has been obsessed with art ever since he was a kid.

“Sitting on my dad’s lap at church, he would draw on the back of the sacrament program to keep me quiet, because I had a lot of energy. He was a graphics designer, so art was his natural language. I became transfixed on that,” he said.

When it came time to pick a career, Woodruff wanted to become an artist.

“My dad’s like, ‘I’ll break your fingers if you become an artist,’” he said. “I didn’t know that’s an in-joke among artists. I took it seriously.”

So he pursued architecture instead, which gave him opportunities to sketch buildings for clients.

Woodruff retired three years ago and discovered plein air painting at a competition in Ogden. He thought of himself as an amateur, but his painting of the Hill Aerospace Museum placed second in the professional category. He’s been hooked ever since.

He typically begins with a pencil sketch before outlining it with a fine tip pen and painting it with watercolors. 

In a competition full of paintings of natural landscapes and wildlife, Woodruff’s depictions of buildings around Heber City stand out. Every brick and wooden slat is intricately detailed, and the buildings have a sense of texture viewers can almost touch.

Woodruff is drawn to painting buildings related to the Heber Valley Railroad in no small part because he worked there as a conductor about two decades ago. His grandfather was also a conductor on the tourist railroad. 

Woodruff completed his nocturne painting, the train station under the light of the full moon, on Tuesday evening. Another of his plein air works, which he painted during last year’s competition, depicts the Heber Valley Railroad’s original depot, broken windows and all.

“It’s just sad watching it decay. But it gets a lot of interesting texture and detail, and there’s history here,” Woodruff said. 

The artist’s passion for historic buildings is evident from his attention to detail and relentless enthusiasm.

“This is the real heart and soul of the community, because you go south of the city park, and it could be Main Street, Anywhere U.S.A., because you’ve got all your chain stores,” he said. “But then, north of that, up to the city building, which was the old Wasatch Stake Tabernacle, that’s the real texture, that’s the real nature of Heber.”

For two of Woodruff’s plein air pieces this year, he scouted out historic homes and painted them from the comfort of his camping chair. He ended up talking to the owners of one of the homes, who happened to be in their yard when he was setting up.

“They’d been in the house for 20 years. They love it,” he said. “It’s got an original sandstone foundation. It’s this typical 1890s, 1900s form on it, especially with all the beautiful woodwork.”

Painting in public often leads to conversations and compliments, which Woodruff joked give him hope for the human race in a time that often feels chaotic and negative.

Plein air painting is an excellent way to gain a greater appreciation for one’s surroundings, he said.

“You can live in an area and not really see it until you have to slow down and paint it,” he said. “You can snap a pic … and it’s one of the hundreds or thousands of pictures on your phone that (makes you think), ‘Why did I take that pic?’ But when you sit down and do a painting, it’s an investment.”

Artwork from the Midway Art Association’s Plein Air Paradise festival will be available to browse and purchase at Midway Town Hall until 6 p.m. on Friday and from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday.

The quick draw will also take place Saturday morning for those interested in watching artists paint around Midway’s town square. At 11 a.m., that work will be auctioned off. Learn more at midwayartassociation.com.

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Some romances start with a lucky match on a dating app or an office crush, but Whitney and Anne B. Carothers Woodward’s began eight years ago in the restaurants of Park City Main Street. 

Anne was working at Vinto’s Pizzeria. Whitney at The Mustang. 

“I think I went over to borrow an onion or something,” Anne reminisced as she kneaded dough at the couple’s Midway eatery, Annie B’s Pizzeria.

From the fryer, Whitney chimed in, “All I see is the little top of her head (over the counter) because she’s so short. I’m like, ‘Who the hell was that?’ And the rest is history.”

Both had worked in the food industry their entire careers but hadn’t considered opening their own restaurant until they realized they couldn’t find the thin crust, East Coast-style pizza they were both raised on anywhere in Utah. Anne is from Massachusetts, and Whitney is from New Jersey.

“We drove to Salt Lake, to Provo, to Ogden. During COVID, we drove to Vegas to get pizza. We couldn’t find good, reliable pizza anywhere,” Whitney said.

So the couple decided to open their own pizzeria: Annie B’s. They opened in Coalville in 2021 and moved to Midway in May. 

The move was inspired by a number of factors. The couple lives in Heber City and were not fans of the daily commute, which was often made even longer by weather and traffic.

“When you’re getting your butt kicked, making pizzas all day, the last thing you want is a two-hour commute,” Whitney said.

The most important factor, however, was a desire to operate out of a larger space. The couple’s restaurant in Coalville was less than 1,000 square feet. The only upside of that was the omnipresent smell of pizza cooking in the kitchen.

“It smelled like pizza as soon as you walked through the door. It gives me goosebumps, still,” Whitney said.

The couple is much more content in their 8,000-square-foot building at 380 E. Main St. in Midway, which used to house Mexican restaurant Tarahumara. 

The Woodwards spent a little over a year renovating the space, from re-tiling the floors to cutting out sections of the wall to serve as windows into the kitchen.

“You’ll see some of the remnants of our unprofessional construction,” Whitney joked.

“Don’t look down at the floor,” Annie said, pointing out imperfections. “I should stick to making the pizzas, not pouring concrete.”

The walls are lined with jerseys signed by athletes like Karl Malone and Pete Rose. Whitney likes to think of his expensive hobby as an investment, but at the same time, he’s not sure if he’ll ever sell any of his over 50 treasures.

The restaurant includes a small coffee shop the couple will open as soon as they hire baristas, and a room with a foosball table and Skee-Ball machine that will eventually be built out as a full arcade.

The Woodwards have also purchased the 3,500-square-foot building next door to develop into a second restaurant. The cuisine is to be determined, but the couple hopes to open it by Christmas.

For now, patrons can enjoy Annie B’s current offerings: sub sandwiches, fish and chips, wings, salads, calzones and plenty of pizzas.

Each pizza was born from experimentation. For example, a friend recently begged the Woodwards to make a chicken parmesan pizza.

“We actually made the cutlet, deep-fried it, melted the cheese on it and put it on top of this really rich, cheesy pizza. He said it was amazing,” Anne said.

But only the best make it on the menu.

Two crowd-pleasers are the Meatballer pizza, topped with homemade meatballs, and Buffalo chicken pizza, which is slathered in the authentic Buffalo sauce of western New York, where Whitney once lived.

The funniest story behind a pizza comes from the Layla, Annie B’s cheesiest pizza, topped with feta cheese, roasted tomatoes, balsamic reduction, arugula salad and lemon vinaigrette.

“We were doing a catering event, and this little 9-year-old girl named Layla would not stop eating all my cheese,” Anne said. “I had it all grated and cut, and it was all ready to go, and she’s just sitting there (eating it). And finally, I had to be like, ‘I’m not going to have enough for the pizza, sweetie.’”

The Woodwards’ secret ingredients are garlic butter on every pizza crust and herb ricotta on every calzone. When Annie B’s started out, it took three months and over 300 batches for the couple to perfect the dough.

“We were so sick of pizza, if you can ever be. Try 10 different batches a day for weeks,” Whitney said. “Towards the end there, I thought, ‘We’ve just eaten too much pizza, and we’re pissed off.’”

That dough-making experience reflects the couple’s philosophy when it comes to food: serve only the best.

“What we can’t make by hand, we buy the top quality, best ingredients we could possibly find.” Whitney said. “Even the fish, we went through 12 different fish companies to try and find the perfect piece of battered cod that wasn’t too light, wasn’t too heavy. And they’re expensive, but that’s just the way we are with food.”

Part of the reason for that is Whitney’s background working at fine dining restaurants. It’s been difficult to realize he doesn’t need tweezers to ensure every little piece of oregano is perfectly placed.

Anne’s culinary background began with enrolling in the New England Culinary Institute in Vermont her mid-20s, when she was a ski bum in Park City trying to figure out what to do with her life. Ever since, she’s been fascinated with the business side of the industry and has always wanted more responsibility than what was in a cook’s job description.

For Whitney and Anne, blending their backgrounds as co-owners was difficult at first.

“We met so late in life that we both had our set ways. First couple of years, we didn’t know who was boss,” Anne said. “But we found our things that we’re great at.”

Whitney’s greatest strength, Anne said, is his people skills, which counterbalance her shyness. Anne’s greatest strength is that she’s “a little prep monster,” as her husband put it, always preparing trays of dough balls to prepare the restaurant for the week.

Plus, Anne chimed in, she’s “the fastest pizza-slinger out there.” She won’t, however, toss pizzas after she got caked in flour the first time she tried it.

The Woodwards are well aware that Midway has a more competitive pizza market than Coalville did, but they think their style of pizza can coexist with local favorites like The Pizza Yard and Café Galleria.

“We’re not looking to compete, (but) be successful with everybody else. We’re surrounded by other great restaurants, which is another reason we picked Midway,” Whitney said. 

Anne added, “There’s higher expectations here. And that makes us feel happy when people love our food, and they have high expectations. It’s almost like the new Park City out here.”

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