< Previous68 BUS I N E SS I N U T A HOutdoor recreation contributes more than $12.3 billion in state GDP, employs more than 110,000 people earning nearly $4 billion in wages and helps drive a vibrant tourism industry. Utah’s natural assets include 54 million acres of public land, five stunning National Parks known collectively as “The Mighty Five,” thousands of miles of hiking and biking trails and fourteen ski resorts set among “the greatest snow on earth.”There’s more. Hunting in Utah is a multi-million dollar industry. Iconic sandstone walls attract rock and ice climbers. Boating and fishing on the state’s abundant waters are as good as it gets.“What really sets Utah apart is the public lands we have here and the recreational opportunities they present,” says Nazz Kurth, president of Petzl America, the outdoor equipment giant headquartered in Salt Lake City. Kurth, like many Utahns, aggressively mixes work and play; he was reached by phone on a skiing trail high above the Utah capital. “Utah,” says Kurth, “attracts people who want a quality of life. That means working hard and also means playing hard. It means, for example, going skiing right out your back door. Or climbing towers in the desert. Or just camping out in the majesty.”Based internationally in Crolles, France, Petzl makes climbing equipment that includes helmets, harnesses, carabiners, ropes, and top-of-the-line headlamps. In addition to its recreational gear, Petzl supplies support equipment to professionals who work in the “vertical realm,” says Kurth, such as arborists and firefighters. Petzl’s Salt Lake City headquarters, completed in 2014 and certified Platinum LEED, includes a 60-foot indoor climbing wall.A Proving Ground for Outdoor GearFor Petzl, and for dozens of other companies, Utah’s great outdoors provides an optimal proving ground for product development. Amer Sports, located in Ogden, cites employees’ use of nearby trails for helping push its Salomon line of hiking and trail running shoes.“When we came to Utah,” says Mike Dowse, president of Amer Sports Ball Sports, “Salomon wasn’t known for its trail running products. I credit the trail system above Ogden for helping push that aspect of our line. There are a dozen trail heads right near our office.”Other outdoor companies that have chosen to headquarter in Utah in include Black Diamond, Skullcandy, Ground Zero, Easton and GPS. The outdoor economy has become such a boon to Utah that, in 2013, Governor Gary “Hoodoos” line the floor of Bryce Canyon National Park.Photos courtesy of Utah Office of Outdoor RecreationHerbert created a first-in-the nation statewide Office of Outdoor Recreation.“Our mission,” says director Tom Adams, “is to make sure that all Utahns can live an active lifestyle through outdoor recreation. People here tell their friends and family about Utah and tourism gets boosted. Then, before you know it, new businesses come to Utah. We’ve seen this happen time and time again. Every company we work with,” says Adams, “says that outdoor recreation is a vital point of why they’re moving to Utah.”Adams notes that, with the boost from the highly successful 2002 Winter Games, entire Utah communities, including Moab, Park City and Ogden have shifted economic focus from minerals extraction to outdoor sports. The Wall Street Journal has named Ogden as “the center of the outdoor sports gear” in the U.S. In addition to Amer Sports, outdoor companies that call Ogden home include ENVE Composites, Mercury Wheels and Osprey Packs.Hoodoo Voodoo in Southern UtahZion National Park in extreme Southern Utah is the third-most popular national park in America, having greeted a record 4.5 million visitors in 2017. Bryce Canyon National Park enjoyed a record year, as well, ranking 12th nationally with 2.6 million visits.Bewitching “hoodoos” greet guests at Bryce, a four-and-a-half hour drive south of Salt Lake City. The tall, skinny spires, according to the National Parks Service, appear in greater abundance in the park’s cathedral-like northern section than anywhere else in the world. Ranging from human-size to well over 100 feet tall, the jagged, totem-like formations are the product of 40 million years of erosion and “frost-wedging,” the geological process of weathering caused water seeping into cracks, freezing and thus expanding. Hoodoos, being in a constant state of decay, won’t be at Bryce forever. Geologists believe their life span has about three million years remaining. The Mormons who settled Salt Lake Valley in were enviable multi-taskers.Equipped with only the scant provisions that could fi t inside their wagons, they faced the momentous job of feeding themselves in a virtual desert while erecting a city from scratch. In short order, they irrigated fi elds, constructed log cabins, built roads and bridges and laid the foundations of public utilities. By , they had broken ground on the world-renowned temple around which by G A R Y D A U GHTE R SA KNACK A KNACK FOR FOR INVENTIONINVENTIONH I S T O R YFrom it’s earliest days, Utah has been a hive of industry.Philo T. Farnsworth gave the world its fi rst television set. Getty Images70 BUS I N E SS I N U T A HA KNACK INVENTIONINVENTIONSalt Lake City arose.It’s not a coincidence, then, that the word “industry” anchors the Great Seal of Utah. As if to emphasize the point, there’s a beehive below it. Utahans are a busy lot, indeed, and their knack for enterprise has given birth to innovations that range from the amusing to the indispensable.Wire’s Pigeon HouseLester Wire was the Salt Lake City police department’s fi rst traffi c chief, appointed in at the age of . Traffi c control, such as it was, was an evolving concept when Wire took the job, with horse-drawn buggies, early automobiles and pedestrians required to carve their own lanes and fend for themselves. Wire dispatched a patrolman to the intersection of Second South and Main Street to try to impose order.Becoming concerned for the traffi c cop’s safety, Wire tried something different. He dipped light bulbs in red and green paint and installed them in two’s on all four sides of an electrifi ed wooden box. He mounted the box to a ten-foot pole and placed his odd contraption at the busy intersection, an illuminated green light signaling “go,” and a red one ordering drivers to stop. So simple and effi cient was the solution that it eventually caught on … everywhere. While the worldwide adoption of the traffi c light testifi es to Wire’s ingenuity, the original was scoffed at in Salt Lake City; it was alternately known as “Wire’s Bird Cage” and “Wire’s Pigeon House.”The Fame-Worthy Man History ForgotGrowing up on a farm in Rigby, Utah, Philo Farnsworth showed an early knack for things electronic. As a child, he rigged his mother’s hand-powered washing machine for electricity and invented a magnetized car lock. According to the memories of his granddaughter Jessica, Farnsworth, while plowing rows in a fi eld as a teen, experienced an epiphany: if he could train an electron to scan rows across a screen, he could send pictures through the air.On September , , Farnsworth successfully transmitted an electronic B U S I N E S S I N U T A H 71UTAHimage for the first time. His “image dissector” proved to be the advance that led to the modern TV.“My contribution,” Farnsworth said years later, “was to take out the moving parts and make the thing entirely electronic. That was the concept I had when I was a freshman in high school.”Over the course of his life, Philo Farnsworth accumulated some 300 US and foreign patents in areas including nuclear fusion, radar and night vision devices. He foresaw the development of flat screen and high definition. Still, the father of the television lived his life in relative obscurity.“He was,” said Jessica, “the most famous man no one ever heard of.”The Heart of the MatterRobert Jarvik began building and refining artificial hearts while a student at the University of Utah. In 1971, Jarvik joined the university’s artificial organs program headed by famed Dutch physician and inventor Willem Johann Kolff. Kolff assigned Jarvik the task of producing a heart for human implantation.Jarvik’s creation, made of plastic and metal and connected to a compressor the size of a washing machine, was approved by the FDA in 1981. On December 2, 1982, the “Jarvik 7” became a worldwide sensation when a team of university surgeons implanted the device into Barney Clark, a retired dentist from Seattle who was facing imminent death. Clark survived 112 days with the Jarvik 7, which was thus considered the world’s first “permanent” artificial heart.Whirling AwayIn 1937, Walter Frederick Morrison of Richfield, Utah tossed the lid of a popcorn can, flying-saucer style, to his girlfriend Lu. It thrilled them so much that they flung it back and forth until it broke. Seeing wider possibilities in their novel form of amusement, the couple launched a side business selling “Flyin’ Cake Pans.”After service in World War II, Morrison convinced an investor to finance a plastic mold that produced the “Whirlo-Way,” the world’s first flying disc. An ensuing version, known as the Pluto Platter, Morrison sold to the Wham-O toy company, which in 1957 gave it the name it is known by around the world today. The Frisbee. Salt Lake City has buzzed with activity since its earliest days.Getty Images72 BUS I N E SS I N U T A HB U S I N E S S I N U T A H 73P H O T O G A L L E R YThis isUTAHThe Windows at Arches National Park.Photo by Tom Till74 BUS I N E SS I N U T A H11. Couple hikes The Narrows in Zion National Park near Springdale.Photo by Matt Hage2. Hikers at Goblin Valley State Park.Photo by Michael Kunde Photo276 BUS I N E SS I N U T A H1231. The beach at Blue Water Resort in beautiful blue Bear Lake.Photo courtesy of Visit Utah2. Solitude Mountain Resort located in the Big Cottonwood Canyon of the Wasatch Mountains.Photo by Matt Hage3. Antelope Island Kayaker on The Great Salt Lake.Photo by Michael Kunde Photo121. Cedar Breaks National Monument Rangers host a star gazing demonstration, or star party, at Brian Head Resort.Photo by Matt Hage2. Sundance Film Festival at Mary G. Steiner Egyptian Theatre in Park City.Photo by Matt Morgan/Visit utahNext >