What did the growth of Utah look like 70 years ago?
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — There’s been a lot of discussion about growth in Utah — most recently in Salt Lake City. These discussions aren’t new, however, and ABC4’s Craig Wirth explains why.
Wirth covered Utah’s growth nearly 70 years ago — talking about how Utah became the “new big deal in the west” in 1956.
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Back in the day, ABC4 had the call letters “KTVT” — and we were proud to report on this growth.
“Are you folks at KTVT going to take a full hour and report that there is a boom underway? Well the answer is yes. Very frankly yes,” one anchor said on-air.
The station had a plywood map with lights on it to show where this growth was taking place.
One light showed St. George, which people said might someday have more than its population of 4,562. They even wondered if the city could become a winter resort area with attractions similar to what could be found in Phoenix, Arizona.
But, with that kind of growth comes motels — and motels charging more than $3 a night.
The growth was happening all across the state with the Glen Canyon Dam, the Central Utah Project, and testing a personal rocket on the west desert.
Utah was expanding more and more. Back then, Salt Lake, Ogden, and Provo comprised the nation’s 35th largest market — outranking cities like Memphis, Tennessee; Rochester, New York; and Ft. Worth, Texas.
“I believe we are going to have a highly diversified, industrial manufacturing industry here in Utah and that it’s going to grow spectacularly over the next 10-15 years,” Senator Wallace Bennett predicted.
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