University of Utah
- Local Atmosphere

Fun Facts about Salt Lake City:

• Salt Lake City was the host city for the 2002 Winter Olympic Games.
• The Great Salt Lake is the second saltiest body of water on Earth, after the Dead Sea in Israel.
• Salt Lake City is less than an hour away from Park City, where the world-renowned Sundance Film Festival is held every January.
• Utah has five national parks (Zion, Arches, Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef and Canyonlands), and ski slopes with “the greatest snow on Earth” are only a short drive away from the University of Utah.
• The original name Mormon pioneers gave Utah when they settled here in 1847 was Deseret, but Washington politicians who disliked the Mormons insisted on calling the state “Utah,” after the Ute Indians.

Famous Utahns:

• Roseanne Barr – actress
• Shawn Bradley – NBA basketball player
• Ted Bundy – serial killer (attended University of Utah Law School)
• Butch Cassidy – outlaw
• Philo Farnsworth – inventor of television
• Jake Garn – senator/astronaut
• J. Willard Marriott – restaurant, hotel chain founder
• Donny and Marie Osmond – singers
• Robert Redford – actor, Sundance Film Festival founder
• James Woods – actor

Local Slang:

• Flip (or fetch) – Common local expletive, used as an inoffensive alternative to a certain other expletive that begins with the letter “F”
• TRAX – Term for the Salt Lake City street car (or “light rail”) system
• Mission – Many members of the LDS Church go on church-service “missions” to different parts of the world for up to two years
• Mormon – Mormon is a nickname for members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or LDS Church or Mormon church); it’s a lot easier to say someone is a Mormon than to say “Latter-day Saint.”
• Ward – Common LDS ecclesiastical unit, whereas most people would say, “at my church . . .” Mormons say, “at my ward . . .”