A Glimpse into the American West: Growing Up in a Small Town
A Bittersweet Tale of a Western Movie Town
Moab, Utah
It's the place you almost always see in an American Western. If you haven't heard of it, you'll probably recognize some of its scenery.
I’ve been having difficulty finding compelling things to write about, and then I remembered Mark Twain’s advice to write what you know. “But I don’t know anything” I worriedly thought to myself. Obviously I know stuff, but I sometimes get that feeling when I’m put on the spot—especially when you compare yourself to other, better writers.
I can, however, confidently say I am very much an expert on my personal history. And one thing about my history that sets me apart from most, is that I grew up with natural eye candy all around, in a very small Utah town, a town which was unlike any other small Utah town. I believe sharing a bit of my story about Moab and growing up there will be interesting for many.
Note: most of the photos below are mine, many of which are from old cell phones during a time when I was new to Photoshop—let’s just say I was a bit zealous in my retouching.
A Farewell Letter
Moab is near and dear to my heart. I spent over two decades there including my formative years. I wanted to write about my experience and give the readers an idea of what life was like in this picturesque town. I think I did that somewhat, but it’s more than that. I felt like I lost a family member or close friend. I belatedly realized my hometown is long gone, it’s not coming back, and the world is worse for it.
It’s gone, but not in the way everybody’s hometown becomes “gone.” Moab has dramatically, fundamentally changed. It looks different, it acts different, it talks different, its heart and soul—if they still exist—are different. The town’s population was small and was like a cast of characters on a beloved TV show, like Northern Exposure, or Twin Peaks without the murder. Those characters are mostly gone. The show was cancelled and rebooted by someone who despises its fans, wants to make it their own thing, and has no respect for tradition, canon, or even good storytelling.
I’m not going to embrace this change. It’s a tragedy. You should mourn its loss.
Now that I’ve ruined the mood, please read on.
Indians, Spaniards, Mexicans, Mormons, and the Atomic Bomb
Like much of America, prior to the pioneers and settlers, Moab was considered Indian land, specifically, Ute Indian (and probably by some Paiute & Navajo, and Apache to a lesser extent—it’s not like they had well-defined and respected borders). The first Europeans to step foot in the area were Spaniards who established the Old Spanish Trail in the late 1500s. The Spanish naturally claimed pretty much everything they could, and the largely uninhabited and definitely unsettled Moab area became a part of Spain until Mexico won its independence in 1821.
Moab still remained a mostly untouched wilderness (with the exception of the Old Spanish Trail and the missionaries, traders, and trappers who used it), until the Mormons arrived.
There’s a whole bunch of Mormon history I am glossing over, but I will say they left Missouri en masse after persecution and their founder, Joseph Smith, and his brother Hyrum were murdered by a mob while they were in jail, in 1844.
Prudently, Brigham Young, Joseph Smith’s successor, took all willing Mormons to Utah. They arrived in and began to settle the Salt Lake valley in 1847.
There was an attempt by the Mormons to establish and maintain a fort in Moab in 1855, but was abandoned after repeated conflicts with the Indians. Inevitably though, settlers eventually made their way down in 1878 and never left.
Moab was pretty much a farming community until the very late 1800s when mining took off. I think there were some gold and silver mines nearby, but cannot verify this (it was pre-uranium, and I don’t think there were any coal mines nearby, so I’m guessing silver and/or gold, but there was definitely some mining). From the late 1800s to the mid 1900s, Moab was pretty much a farm and ranch community, with a bit of mining mixed in. Then World War II happened and a mad race to The Bomb ensued.
Uranium was discovered near Moab in the early 1950s—being one of the most important ingredients for atomic bombs and nuclear fission—just as the Cold War was taking off, and the town boomed practically overnight. The population went from about a thousand to over 6,000. Moab became the uranium capital of the world.
Moab was the American frontier. It was the old West, and then it transformed virtually overnight to fuel the atomic age.
But it didn’t last.
Then the 1980s came along with Ronald Reagan, Max Headroom, and a shift in attitudes. After three mile island, and with increasing global support for nuclear disarmament, atomic bombs and nuclear plants went out of fashion. Uranium was no longer in demand. The uranium mines and mills closed, and Moab’s population collapsed to a few thousand.
Moab: Small Town USA, But More.
Around this time of local economic uncertainty, I was born. My dad was laid off from the uranium mill, and my mom tried to help out by selling homemade Pound Puppies. For a brief time, we were even on government assistance. I was very young, and I remember wanting things other kids had, but never really felt too poor. It was probably incredibly stressful for my parents and given social attitudes back then, I imagine it was humiliating. I didn’t pick up any of that stress from my parents, however—something I’m grateful for and hope to emulate. Thankfully, my dad got a decent job several months later (we were still not wealthy).
Throughout the 80s and early 90s, the only thing keeping Moab going was its fledgling tourist economy and a potash mine. Times were hard for many Moabites.
Farms and ranches were still cornerstones of the area, but their prominence had shrunk significantly and would continue shrinking. The potash mine was crucial, but it was not nearly enough to sustain a town of thousands. Tourism kept the town alive and sometime in the 80s, the city pretty much decided to go all in and market the hell out of Moab.1
After all, Moab was in the movies. Some big ones too, particularly John Ford movies which featured John Wayne, Henry Fonda, Maureen O'Hara, and more.2
A nice thing about living in Moab is the chance to be in movies. Every few years a big movie production would put out a casting call for extras. I tried to get on a few of these but never made the cut and stopped trying after a while. I remember signing up to be an extra for Geronimo (good movie by the way), and the first step in that process was filling out a questionnaire. I recall one of its questions asked if you could ride a horse.
I can’t say what it was like in other small American towns, but from the looks of most of them, and from my absorbed Americana, I can say Moab was different from most in the following ways:
It was really small. The population is less than 10,000, and throughout the 80s, it was less than 5,000.
It was isolated. You had to drive 110 miles, about two hours, to get to the nearest bigger city, Grand Junction, Colorado (population of ~29,000 in 1990) or Price, Utah (population of ~8,700 in 1990), with pretty much nothing in between, and those weren’t really considered big by most standards. The nearest “big city” was Salt Lake, a 4-hour drive. If you wanted a McDonald’s Big Mac in Moab during the 80s, you had to drive to Grand Junction to get it.3
There was a large mix of hippies and cowboys. And for the most part, they begrudgingly got along. Some people even belonged to both of these groups!4
It was religious, but also rebellious. Moab was Mormon Utah’s black sheep. A plurality of Moabites were Mormon, yet this plurality was much smaller than other Utah cities. I’m not sure why, but Moab always stood out in this regard—we had more bars/clubs, alcohol, coffee, and teen pregnancy per capita than any other city in Utah. It was the Wild West.5
Perhaps relatedly, there was seemingly nothing to do (relative to a bigger city at least. Honestly, there were things to do and more on this later). This led to drugs, teen pregnancy, and a lot of drinking. Despite all that, it had hardly any serious crime when I lived there and likely remains that way today, but less so (we left our doors unlocked 24/7 during the 80s).
It had and has unique subcultures of 4x4 and cycling enthusiasts.6
The area is home to not just one type of landscape. There’s more to Moab than the rugged desert: such as the Colorado River and streams enabling hundreds of acres of farmland and some wetlands. There is the La Sal mountain range close by (~20 mins to the base of the mountain from downtown Moab). Mountain lakes, meadows, and conifer & aspen forests for miles and miles.
There are two national parks nearby, the world famous Arches National Park, and the lesser known but equally beautiful Canyonlands National Park, not to mention some state parks.
It’s all mostly easily accessible too. You can do any of the following within 20 minutes of downtown Moab (climate permitting): hiking, river rafting, biking, off-roading, cross-country skiing and beautiful mountain or desert camping.
The Great Outdoors
As you can see, the big draw of Moab to any outsider are the stunning, and at times literally breathtaking views. And there is lots of it. One other thing worth mentioning is the crisp, clean, fresh air. I sorely miss the air.
Every Moabite who has spent any meaningful time there has experienced Moab’s outdoors. It’s hard to avoid. Take your pick, you can probably experience the Moab outdoors any way you want. The following are my experiences.
I was born there, and I took it all for granted, but occasionally its incredible beauty would make me pause and stare in awe. My earliest memory of the Moab outdoors was my own front yard—I was being held by my big sister, staring across the street wanting something, and in my direct view were the tall red cliffs towering over our neighborhood literally yards away, that I grew to know intimately.
I remember my dad taking us on hiking and camping trips all over. Frequently to the expansive Canyonlands National Park. My dad would set up camp and us kids would run around playing on the rocks, imagining this rock was a spaceship or that rock was a car. We’d search for interesting looking rocks, or whatever caught our eye. And later we’d have some dinner and roast marshmallows. The next day we might go for hike or a scenic drive. We’d go camping every year, sometimes multiple times a year, for about a decade while we were young and my dad was reasonably fit (he was a smoker, and it eventually caught up with him). We’d go hiking or on scenic outings several times a year.
I was in Boy Scouts, and yes, the Moab troops took advantage of our environment. Camping and outdoor activities were frequent. One year, our troop was camping in the La Sals and us scouts decided to hike from camp A to camp B, which we knew was some miles in a certain direction. Many hours passed and we were still in the woods with no sight of any camp. Some of us started to panic. But a few of us remained calm and reassured everyone that if we stuck to the original plan, we would have to run into the road to the other camp. Another hour went by. Things were getting tense and we were running out of daylight. Arguing ensued. Just as fists were about to be thrown, we heard a distant car horn. Sure enough, the road was about a hundred yards ahead and we all made it safely to camp. Damn kids!
Another year was the Klondike derby. We had to camp in the mountains in January. In freezing temperatures in several feet of snow. Luckily they prepared us well, but I was still very cold. I don’t recommend tent camping in the winter.
As I got a little older, my outdoor adventures lessened, but I still managed to go camping, fishing, sight-seeing, and go for hikes occasionally. Plus off-roading.
My first vehicle was a 4x4 heavy duty Ford pickup truck. She was big, and I made her bigger. I took her all over and on many 4x4 trails. One time I took my friend out to the nearby sand dunes and literally jumped my truck Dukes of Hazzard-style, multiple times until I popped a tire off its bead. Foolishly, I didn’t have a jack to put on the spare, so we drove 3-miles per hour back to town, ruining the tire. Sure enough though, half-way to town another one of my friend’s mom saw us and pulled over. She lent us a jack and we were shortly on our merry way!
There were times I nearly rolled my truck over messing around on the rocks, and one time I actually did—luckily it sustained barely any damage, only needed a new passenger window. I’ll have to write about my offroad adventures another time. Suffice it to say rock-crawling and off-roading around Moab is an intense, adrenaline-spiking, rewarding, occasionally scary, and somewhat expensive but fun hobby.
A Tight Community
My high school graduating class consisted of about 95 students. Many of whom I knew since kindergarten, and a few from before that. At least in the 80s and early 90s everybody knew each other. This was good because it formed a tight-knit community that had your back (usually). It was bad because any gossip could spread rapidly and destroy people. God help you if you did something bad and people found out.
In my experience, it was mostly good. When I was a teenager, our house burned down (more on that here—scroll down). Everyone was okay, but we lost nearly all our possessions, including family photos and keepsakes. We were insured, thankfully, but we immediately needed help for the time being, specifically, we needed clothing, as we only had the clothes on our backs. The community gave us more clothes than we needed and offered more help on top of that. It wasn’t some faceless NGO helping us out, it was our neighbors, friends, and colleagues. The people we’d known for years. You can’t replace that sort of relationship.
Church groups, boy scouts, and others would often help out others, particularly the elderly, assisting with yardwork and other home maintenance. Before the fire, my family got help with painting our house when we could’ve easily done it ourselves (I was a rebellious teen and hated the new color, so I made myself scarce). After my dad passed away, a lot of people came and helped clean up our back yard, which had accumulated a rather large pile of yard waste and a fair amount of weeds.
Even when I was an adult, visiting my mother, I had some car trouble and was stuck at the grocery store. Mind you, the grocery store was literally a 7-minute walk from the house (I don’t typically carry a cart load of groceries on my back). But I called AAA because I had it and why not use it? The tow truck driver, who I knew of course (but wasn’t really friends with) asked me a few questions and rather than proceed to tow it, looked under the hood, performed some automotive magic, and the car was good to go. No charge, no paperwork, have a nice day!
Same thing at the tire shop. I got a free flat repair a couple of times. I was a local, I’d be back sooner or later and that was good enough, have a nice day!
If you were a regular at a restaurant, there was a good chance you would get special treatment, or a free entree now and then. In her later years, my mother went to one restaurant multiple times a week. They had a table specifically reserved for her and as soon as they saw her face, began preparing her favorite meal. They treated her like royalty. And these were relative newcomers to Moab, they were Latin American and spoke in heavy accents. Didn’t matter. You were treated with respect, care, and thoughtfulness. The entire restaurant was very sad when they found out she died. I was and am still grateful for how they treated my mom. They don’t have a website, but here’s the restaurant’s Yelp page.
It’s extremely hard to get this sort of community in a big city, which is a shame. Upon reflection, I believe the community was one of the best things Moab had. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses, but it was good where it mattered. Kids were taken care of, neighbors helped each other, we treated each other with respect, and we wanted each other to be happy.
Growing Up in Moab
In my hometown as a child, you were free as a bird. Like most other parents in Moab, mine pretty much let me run loose all over town after I was around 7 or 8 years old. On many occasions around that age, I took my bicycle and rode everywhere, up and down Main Street, through various neighborhoods, and hung out all day with whichever friend I could. As long as I was back home for dinner, all would be well.
Moab city proper has a couple of creeks running through it. And in these creeks were minnows, toads, frogs, water snakes, crawdads and more. The creek near our house during the summer was a veritable jungle, and me, my brother and friends spent many days exploring, and catching toads, crawdads, and minnows. We did catch frogs too, at least the small ones. The real treasure however, was the big bullfrogs, but I never was good enough to capture one. I remember trying to sneak up on one once from behind, and before I could get close, I swear that thing jumped a good 20 feet away into the water and vanished.
Everyone who lived there was no more than 5 minutes away from undeveloped, wilderness-like land. The rugged hills and cliffs were literally across the street from my house, and every summer I’d spend most days playing up there. There were scorpions, coyotes and rattlesnakes, but nobody ever got stung or bit. If they did, it was extremely rare. Cactus was often more of a problem than any critter.
If we weren’t riding our bikes, playing in the creek, or up in the hills, we were playing video games. Nintendo was huuge. Practically every kid in Moab had an NES, and later an SNES. I spent so many hours playing the original Mario, and I was one of the first to figure out how to get firepower with a small Mario. This was pre-internet, I had no guide, it was all pure luck and experimentation. After recreating it for my friends, I was the most popular kid on the block that month.7
The public schools weren’t great, but they weren’t terrible. If a kid applied themselves, they could go far and the schools would help them grow to some extent. The poor-performers got help too, but for the most part, I don’t think the extra attention did much for them. Many kids would walk to school alone or walk to the bus stop alone. I think I did that starting in 1st grade. In elementary school, there was approximately one teacher supervising all of recess for what seemed like 100 kids. We sure got away with some stuff. Sadly, there was also too much undetected bullying, fighting, and awfulness going on in the schools, at least from about 2nd to 8th grade. It wasn’t too bad, but if you wanted to avoid any unpleasantness, you needed to find your crowd and stick with them.
In high school, there was very little preparation and encouragement for college. In my experience, unless you were already planning on it and being pro-active about it, most high schoolers just drifted through grades 9-12 and ended up with only a diploma and few ideas of what to do next. I hope this has improved.
After school, the smaller kids would typically go home, play with their neighborhood friends until dinner.
But when you got older, right around puberty, the kid stuff became less appealing and you started to get bored. For boys, video games still filled some of the void, as did sports, and hobby games like D&D or Magic the Gathering, but there was one pastime virtually all Moab teens took part in. Hanging out on and/or cruising Main.
Have a car or a buddy with a car? Hop in and cruise Main Street. We would literally drive up and down the same 1.5 mile long street, sometimes for hours (I know Boomers, Gen Xers, and many Millennials did this, but I think the Zoomers were far less interested). If you had a few extra bucks, you would stop at Tasty Freeze and get a shake. Tasty Freeze sadly went out of business and turned into a sub shop with custom soft drinks, which also hit the spot for Main cruisers. Both were a great spot at which to chill and people watch. In the spring, summer, and fall, there was an endless supply of tourists walking by.
Granted, Moab was pretty small and had fewer activities available than in big cities, but we weren’t activity poor. Among these activities are:
Community and other miscellaneous events such as car shows, 4x4 off-road events such as Easter Jeep Safari, art shows, music festivals, marathons and more. Some of these were and are big.
High school sports. Many football games filled the stands. The town was pretty good at supporting the baseball, basketball, and other teams too.
Spring/Summer sports for kids and adults. The kids had more options, and I think the adults basically had softball.
Auto racing: typically on a dirt track, such as motocross, demolition derbies, and I think stock & sprint car racing.
Parades: a handful per year for holidays.
A big annual rodeo. Also lesser rodeo events throughout the spring and summer, typically for kids and young adults, and other organized equestrian activities.
Church activities.
Not to brag, but we also have a bowling alley and movie theater.
A public outdoor swimming pool open during the summer (now renovated and is year-round).
Multiple parks and green spaces.
A pretty cool golf course.
There is even a historic auditorium/theater which hosts plays, films, and other events regularly.
A small reservoir 15 minutes south of downtown for fishing, kayaking, swimming, sunbathing, etc.
There are also mountain lakes in the La Sals which are stocked regularly for fishing.
Plus all the outdoor things mentioned previously. Other outdoor activities enjoyed around Moab are skydiving, tours, horseback riding, and glamping.
Despite all of that and more, at times it felt like it wasn’t enough. Many Moabites had their fill of the outdoors or just weren’t interested. While the town felt very safe and had almost no crime such as burglaries, robberies, or worse, our police-to-resident ratio was and probably still is extreme. Moab is the only city in the county, and we have the Moab Police Department, the Grand County Sheriff, and the Utah Highway Patrol, all three of which were ever-present in Moab. I understand the police presence now, as there are thousands (sometimes tens of thousands) of tourists present any given day, but back in the 80s and 90s, especially during the winter, law enforcement really had to look for things to do and for many of us, it started to look like harassment. My only theory for the lopsided police-to-resident ratio is that Moab was viewed as Utah’s black sheep and that a tight lid needed to be kept on our more boisterous population. I have several minor traffic tickets to prove it.
During your teen years and in high school, you had some options for fitting in. There were primarily a handful of groups: the jocks, the nerds, the good Mormons, the goths/hippies/stoners/punks/metalheads, and the cowboys/rednecks. Some of these groups overlapped, and most would readily accept you if you were even only slightly like them. At one time or another I belonged to most of these groups. Much of the time these groups tolerated each other rather well.
Regardless of what group you were in, and despite everything, boredom was a part of life in Moab. Have you ever looked in a fully stocked fridge and said to yourself, “there’s nothing to eat!” That’s what it was like being a teenager in Moab. Plenty of things, but nothing to do. So for good or ill, we made our own fun.
Probably like much of teenage America, and if you weren’t a good Mormon, there was a strong chance a teenage Moabite would find themselves at an unsanctioned party, with a lot of alcohol, music, and hormones. Given the heavy police presence in town, it made being a teenager difficult at times. So the parties were not infrequently held out far in the wilderness as to avoid the prying eyes of responsible adults and law enforcement. The good thing about that was you could have bonfires and be as loud as you wanted. The bad thing was that the cops literally had spies among the teens. We all knew who it was. The trouble was they didn’t rat the partiers out every single time, so it was hard to know when/if you could let loose. But if that guy was in attendance, the smart teens had a quick escape plan or just went to a different party. And yes, the cops would and did ticket every single underage drinker, every chance they got. A lot of teens and young adults, and if I may re-use an apt adjective, sort of developed this Dukes of Hazzard-style relationship with the police: adversarial, but we all belonged to the same town and wouldn’t tolerate any serious crime, especially from outsiders.
But at the parties, good times were often had by all and they’d do it all over again the next weekend. Sometimes however, and not infrequently, fights would break out, vehicles would crash, and pregnancies would happen. But for most kids, the partying didn’t severely affect their lives.
By the mid-90s there were already a handful of fast food franchises on Main Street, and before that there were always restaurants, plenty of motels, touristy retail shops, and various other businesses frequently in need of cheap labor. If you didn’t mind low pay and unrewarding work, there was always a job for you in Moab, at least during the summer.
This work was another source of entertainment for us bored teens. I must have witnessed tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage or lost business during my time working in fast food, solely due to teenage shenanigans. I won’t name any names, but I was personally witness to the theft of multiple drive-thru headsets from a local fast food franchise. Back in the 90s, it turns out many fast food joints used the same kind of headsets. For example, and hypothetically speaking of course, one could use a McDonald’s headset and communicate with the drive-thru staff and customers at Wendy’s, place fake orders, cancel or adjust real orders, be rude to customers, and generally wreak havoc. These headsets could be used at more than 2 establishments. After a good time was had all over town and out of fear of getting caught, I have on good authority the evidence was quickly disposed of.
Other entertainment ranged from joking around and goofing off, to blatant sabotage. I was also personally witness to a purposefully flooded men’s bathroom (the employees in on it were thoroughly amused, all the more by making the manager think they were heroically trying to fix the increasingly severe disgusting problem). Hours of roughhousing and wrestling on the clock, petty theft, and more severe property damage that jeopardized the continued legal functioning of the restaurant. Sadly, one restaurant went under, I assume in part due to this sort of thing (it wasn’t because of me!). The restaurant where I witnessed the most egregious stuff is still going strong, however.
The dating scene was rough. So rough. Due to the small population, you pretty much knew exactly who you wanted to date and who you didn’t. For most, if you were even a little picky, you would likely be disappointed. At times it felt like everyone was everyone’s ex, and they all took turns dating one another. That, or it was a case of of unrequited love, or worse, you were undateable. On the upside, there were lots of young tourists, and there were plenty of fish in that sea, if only fleeting.
Like most small towns, after the kids graduate high school, they pack up and move to another city, usually for school, work, romantic variation, or just something different. There was very little room for advancement in Moab.
But among those who stayed, you had some good (but difficult) options or bad (and still difficult in a different way) options. There were a few pretty good private sector jobs plus some decent government jobs with great benefits, or if you became a successful business owner, life was pretty good. But if you weren’t lucky nor a business owner, nor had great connections, you would be stuck in a low-paying retail or service job. I’m sure there are some waitstaff, bartenders, and tour guides that make a killing, but they are the exception. The pay for those jobs was low back then and now it’s much worse thanks to a soaring cost of living.
Culture
The culture of Moab is hard to explain. There were many cultures and subcultures that sort of blended together if you squint just right, and could arguably be interpreted as a broad and loose, but somewhat cohesive culture.
Like much of the Rocky Mountain West, attitudes leaned toward individualism, vaguely & slightly libertarian, but also conservative in many respects. Moab had all that, but also a liberal streak. It was a Mormon town, but not too Mormon. And among the Mormons it did have, many had no problem drinking caffeine, using tobacco, skipping church, and even drinking the occasional beer. There were households that were as strict as the stereotypical preacher’s, but they were few. Moab was relaxed. Go to Provo, Utah and half the alcohol-drinking, tobacco-smoking, non-church-going Mormons would’ve been excommunicated. That rarely happened in Moab—if they purged all their lost sheep, they wouldn’t have any sheep left. Like I said, Moab wasn’t your ordinary Utah town. I can’t find a picture of it, but there was a popular poster hung in various Moab establishments long ago, which showed a cowboy with a lasso riding a mountain bike—the caption was “not your ordinary western town” or something along those lines. That was Moab.
Moab was and probably still is majority white, like much of Utah. But there were significant numbers of Navajo. There were also many Mexicans, some Apache, a few recent European immigrants, and a handful of black people. In addition to Mormons, there is a notable Catholic presence, as well as some Protestant churches. I know there are some (probably few) Jews in Moab, and even a small presence of Mennonites nearby (superficially, they seem like a modernized Amish, at least from my experience). We all pretty much got along in school. From my young, innocent eyes, I lived in a colorblind, tolerant society and it was nice. Looking back though, there is the difficult to avoid soft discrimination against non-Mormons. Mormons are just more connected to each other, know each other better, share the same values, and there’s a shorthand and mutual understanding that too easily tends to benefit their own. It’s probably like this anywhere there is a majority or plurality religion embedded deeply in the history, culture, and people of any place. Still, most people I think would say Mormons are nice.
Some of you might be wondering, how did you not go crazy so far away from civilization!? To answer that, all I can say is Moab is civilization. It’s not like we didn’t have phones, TV, radio, and later the internet. We were connected, we had 2 grocery stores, a post office, pharmacies, restaurants, coffee shops, a book store or two, auto shops, contractors, plumbers, electricians, schools, a hospital, a library, a museum, a Ford dealership, and did I mention the bowling alley and movie theater?! We were plugged in, but there was a slight buffer. Our clothing stores were maybe okay in a pinch, but most of us made the 4-hour round trip to Grand Junction to go school clothes shopping and for other important items (Grand Junction had a mall!). The people got their culture cues from TV and each time they went to a bigger city.
There was a strong country music undercurrent, very evident if you turned on the radio, but there was also MTV, cassette tapes and CDs loaded with pop music, rock, jazz, metal, and more. We were just far enough away from other people to be isolated, but close enough to be connected. If you can find a place like that, try it!
Some major downsides are of course, fewer opportunities for good work, and if you needed serious medical attention or a specialist, you’d probably have to go to Grand Junction or Salt Lake. If it was an emergency, you’d get life-flighted.8
The Present and Future of Moab
Unfortunately, like a lot of rural, scenic American towns, in one way Moab is very similar. The rich buy up loads of land and make it their plaything, slowly erasing all that was great about it. If you don’t like gentrification, you’re going to want to sit down before I tell you about resort-ification.
The town has changed dramatically since I left, especially since I was a child. There were zero resorts around Moab when I was a kid. Now there are at least 10. There was probably less than a dozen motels in the 80s, now there are at least 44, not counting RV parks, campgrounds, and Air BnB. And there are now an absurd number of luxury 2nd homes, entire neighborhoods of them. Moab had rich people in the 80s, but they were relatively few and most of them lived in a typical house in a regular neighborhood. There were very few luxury houses.
I don’t know how much the local culture has changed, but I can make a good guess. The wealthy started increasingly moving in, even before I left this was evident. They bring their wealthy friends and their leisurely pursuits and playthings require support staff. Then the wealthy go somewhere else for the winter and the support staff can go screw themselves. Remember, there is practically nothing within 110 miles, so commuting is not really an option. Meanwhile, the cost of living sky rockets and the support staff are damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. You don’t have a community. And if there is one still holding on, it’s under a lot of pressure.
The Moab hippies, farmers, cowboys, middle-class Mormons, Navajos and Apaches, and the last tamers of the Wild West are being washed away. Their children moved away, seasonal workers and the mega rich moved in. The old school Moabites are an endangered species.
The town’s future is predictable and sad. To help conclude my post, I’ll quote the late great Moabite, Jim Stiles, founder, publisher, and editor of the eccentric local paper, the Canyon Country Zephyr at length:
But while some environmentalists may believe that paving over alfalfa fields with something like Moab’s Rim Village/condo city is striking a blow for Mother Nature and the New Economy of the West, we should remember Thomas Power’s warning about the long-term view of this kind of development. Runaway tourism/growth/expansion of towns like Moab should cause all of us to take notice and give pause—to re-think all of this. Exploding tourist numbers and a ‘second home culture’ transform a community, shift the emphasis of the town away from the people who live there and toward those who don’t. Moab doesn’t exist for its citizens; it’s there, in fact, for high dollar transients. And it rarely benefits the small-town residents that were there during the tough times; it’s the new arrivals with the capital to invest that flourish.
Stiles goes further, discussing details about a potential development for condos and a resort in a mostly untouched area south of town. This is an area where only cows and the odd OHV roamed, and you’d think the environmentalists would put up a fight:
What kind of concerns did the Sierra Club have [about the potential development] and what were their requests? Besides setting structures farther back from the rim of the canyon, Binyon made the following demands:
“Coloring roads to match the surrounding soil…parking lots colored to match the surrounding soil…utilizing medium to darker earth-tones, and non-reflective materials on all structures…outdoor lighting should be kept to a minimum…”
They were literally cosmetic in nature.
The Sierra Club also encouraged restrictions on OHVs…”Next to cows, (this is) the most damaging thing currently happening on the mesa. Please be explicit in not permitting their use on the mesa.”Apparently, keeping out cows and OHVs was an acceptable trade-off for a massive multi-million dollar “wilderness” resort lodge and scores of condos and homes built on $600,000 lots.
Liss’s reply could not have been more accommodating, “I would be happy to discuss our project with you and members of your Chapter,” and added enthusiastically, “I am a member of the Sierra Club and greatly respect the work being done around the country.” No other environmental group in Utah even chose to express an opinion.Between 2001 and 2007, residential prices more than doubled. I know that for a fact. Suddenly my little 900 square foot home was “worth” a quarter of a million dollars. Just a few years earlier, I had joked with my favorite realtor, Norma Nunn, about selling my house. And I had even thrown out the 250K price as a teaser. Norma just laughed…”Check back with me in 25 years.” It happened in less than five.
17 years later, shortly before his death, Stiles updated this 2007 article with the following paragraph:
Since then, what has happened to Moab defies all logic. But it’s nothing but a cash cow for investors who arrived in Moab with far more money than a a genuine interest in the future of Moab’s working class residents. I see no change in the direction Moab continues to follow, despite the well-meaning intentions of new Moabites who arrived about 30 years too late. And are now upset about it…
Funny how it’s all too easy that a resort and condo development for the rich get the green light to disrupt a small rural town, but propose some housing for the regular folk and suddenly NIMBYism and hardcore environmentalism are in vogue.
I returned to visit Moab a few years back. I was shocked at how it had become so crowded, chock full of tourists, new motels built every year, new resorts and luxury housing littering the countryside. To be fair, there were some new high density housing lots, but they were few and far between.
Whatever Moab was, and it was something special, it is definitely not that now and will likely never be anything like that again. At least the national and state parks are off limits to resort and condo developers, for now.
I hope I’ve given you a good peek and some small understanding at what life was like, and how quaint and beautiful it was, living in the iconic landscape of Moab, Utah. I really do miss it, and I'm truly sad at what it has become.
Thank you for reading.
If you’re interested, there is more about Moab history here and here.
Photo dump
More photos I was too lazy to find a good place to cram in:
Lots of nostalgia, but no tech nostalgia today.
In the early 90s, we even got Delicate Arch put on Utah license plates.
While researching this, I learned John Ford punched Henry Fonda during the production of “Mister Roberts”. Moab is also still used in many Westerns, one of the latest being Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga;” I’ve been to the place where much of Costner’s film was shot on multiple occasions, and I can say it rarely looks that lush. The ground is not that yellow, it’s more red than anything, plus it must have been a wet spring because it is usually devoid of most plant life except scattered sagebrush and the odd tree, with the exception of irrigated fields.
We got a McDonald’s in 1990. It was a big deal.
Think Willie Nelson.
It’s also noteworthy that Moab is one of the few Utah cities without a Mormon temple. Perhaps fittingly, the high school mascot is a Red Devil.
I ran out of time, but I will write more about these subcultures in the future. I was definitely part of the 4x4 subculture and enjoyed a lot of off-roading/rock crawling.
I know most won’t even care, but a few years later my friend and I collectively beat Super Mario 3 (we would take turns playing—I think you could cooperatively progress through the game with 2 players, Mario and Luigi, if I recall correctly). We were the first in our neighborhood to do it, and probably among the first in the city. It felt like a real achievement and is a fond memory.
An emergency helicopter ride to Grand Junction cost over $10k back in the 90s. My dad and a couple of friends took that ride.