Summit County

The county in brief

A traveler's read on Summit County

Park City inside Summit County is the only US ski-resort town where the historic mining-era Main Street commercial district and a world-class ski-resort base sit within a single walkable street grid — the town's 19th-century silver-mining downtown was preserved through the 1970s economic transition to skiing because the town was nearly bankrupt by 1962 (zero new construction during the mining-collapse decades) and the historic core was therefore not demolished as it was in most contemporary Western mining boomtowns. The Park City Mountain ski area at the western edge and the Deer Valley Resort at the southern edge both load lifts within a few blocks of Main Street. The 2002 Winter Olympics held ski-jumping, bobsled, luge, and skeleton at the Utah Olympic Park 3 miles north along UT-224 — the venue continues to operate as a year-round public-access training facility and as a public bobsled-ride attraction the rest of the year.

The Mirror Lake Scenic Byway (UT-150) climbs 78 miles from Kamas through the Uinta Mountains to Evanston, Wyoming, crossing Bald Mountain Pass at 10,759 ft (one of the highest paved through-routes in Utah) and providing the principal RV access to dozens of Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest dispersed-camping sites accepting rigs to 35 ft. The road closes by snowfall (typically late October) and reopens late May per UDOT seasonal-closure schedule. Rockport State Park southeast of Coalville accepts rigs to 50 ft with electric hookups across 80 sites — the principal Summit County state-park RV-friendly base, year-round reservation through Utah State Parks. Park City town bans overnight RV street parking citywide; commercial RV lots concentrate along I-80 between Coalville and Echo Junction.