Salt Lake City

Salt Lake City

The populous capital of Utah, Salt Lake City (SLC) lies between the Wasatch Range, considered as the western edge of the Rockies and the Great Salt Lake. Though the peaks in this mountain range are not high, they are sculpted with glaciers and receive as much as 500 inches of snow in a year. As you fly into SLC, you can see the rugged mountain range and the city splayed out below. The area is rich in copper and the world’s largest copper mine is also found in SLC. The city is bordered by an enormous water body that looks green from the air, surrounded by salt pans.

SLC and nearby cities are a skier’s paradise in winter. The city hosted the 2002 Winter Olympics, officially known as the XIX Olympic Winter Games. As successful as the games were touted to be, they were plagued by scandal, a number of IOC members had to resign because they had accepted inappropriately valuable gifts in return for voting for Salt Lake City to hold the Games. (Who ever said bribery and corruption only exists in India!).

History of Salt Lake City:
The city was founded in 1847 by Mormon pioneers led by Brigham Young. They fled the East to escape religious persecution and set up The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS or Mormon Church). A decade later when the Mormon practice of “polygamy” came to light, it was denounced as “anti-democratic” and “un-American”, the then President sent an 2500 strong army to watch the LSD and replace Brigham Young as governor. Young in response set his men to act as guerrillas and harass the soldiers, setting into motion the Utah conflict. Finally in 1896, the LSD church renounced the practice and paved the way to SLC becoming the state capital. This is not to say that polygamy has been totally banned and does not exist, take the case of Warren Jeffs, the “prophet” of the fundamentalist LSD break away group who was recently arrested.

The city is well designed and laid out on a grid plan, much like Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, each street running at right angles to each other. The streets are broad, the original settlers planned for enough space to turn a wagon at any street. The city is truly beautiful, within the city there is a sharp rise in elevation (almost 1000 feet) as one travels north or east from the city center which of course translates to aching calves! As you walk, it seems that there is a mountain at the end of each street, the streets are broad and clean. It is very picturesque indeed!

Though the city is typically stereotyped to be a predominantly LSD city (50 % of the current population are members of LSD), it is culturally diverse. We had lunch downtown at a super disgusting Curry in a Hurry run by a Pakistani…. Ugh will starve to death before eating in one of those again! What I really loved about SLC was that there were so many Indian restaurants; I actually found one who delivered yummy hot spicy food right to my hotel room!

We were in SLC en route to Yellowstone, hence had a day before the trip and almost 2 days after. We stayed at the Red Lion Inn, which was a couple of blocks walking distance from the TRAX, a light rapid urban transit system, aka the lighter version of the tram or trolley. What was even more fun was that we were in the free fare zone, which meant no tickets! It was a short ride to our first destination which was Temple Square, in the heart of downtown. It occupies a full city block in the heart of SLC and is its number one tourist attraction. High walls surround the complex, with wrought iron gates providing ingress on all four sides.

As soon as you enter the gates, you are greeted by cheerful young women, holding bibles. Several of these women are from outside the United States and are members of the LSD and spend a year donating their time to act as guides in the Mormon Temple complex. This is advantageous to the LSD ‘cause these girls are bi/multilingual and can thus give tours in all the languages they know. The girls who met us were from Japan and Brazil I believe.

The magnificent Salt Lake Temple has 6 spires and stands as one of Salt Lake City's oldest and most recognized building structures. Construction of the temple began in 1853 under the direction of Brigham Young and took 40 years to complete. The temple was constructed of granite hauled by oxcart from a quarry located 20 miles outside of Salt Lake City. The thing about it is not every one is allowed into the church. If you aren’t an LSD member, you don’t have access, and only those LSD members deemed “worthy” can enter the sacred temple. That kind of defeats the idea of a temple to me, but each to his own I guess!

The tour takes about 45 minutes, and what catches your attention almost at once is that it is huge, and so neat and well kept. After all the LSD members have to contribute a part of their annual earnings to the church. We didn’t see the Mormon Tabernacle because it was under construction, but we did go into the LSD’s newest facility, The Conference center considered to be the world’s largest religious auditoriums, it can seat 21,000 people. State of the art video, sound and light equipment grace the auditorium that has no pillars to obscure anyone’s view. The auditorium is so huge, it can house a jumbo 747 with room to spare, and if you don’t understand English, translation services are available in 60 languages. It houses the 11, 623 brass pipe organ that accompanies the Tabernacle choir. This is really impressively enormous and the choir isn’t some small fry, it is 325 people strong and has won a grammy award and have traveled extensively internationally.

From The LSD, we caught the TRAX to the Gateway Mall. Thank god it was closed :0) it had all my favorite shops. It is really neat because it isn’t a box type indoor mall like so many others. It is an outdoor bi-level shopping area that spans two blocks. The Olympic Legacy Plaza stands in memory of the 2002 Winter Olympics, which were held in Salt Lake City. Entertainers perform regularly in the plaza and throughout the Gateway, which resembles shopping centers in Europe with its narrow streets and wide sidewalks. Further it is just behind the Delta Center where you can catch a Jazz game. Of course if all the shops were closed and I still loved it, there had to be something else to catch my eye!

Right in the heart of the mall is a s a multipurpose stage, which serves as a location for a landmark water feature, the Gateway Fountains. In recognition of the 2002 Winter Olympics, the stage surface is marked with the Olympic Snowflake pattern detailed in the granite paving. The snowflake is also the inspiration for a vividly animated variety of water expressions. At first I just thought they were weird fountains and was enjoying watching the kids play until the announcement came on to step back and take a seat and then the music started. Tall bursts of water, each individually controlled to create a myriad of patterns and sequences, loft skyward at the center of the feature choreographed to music. Thesekinetic plumes are surrounded by groups of white-water mounds. Beyond the water mounds, toward the outer edge of the feature, visitors can enjoy playful fields of smaller water pulses that provide endless fun and surprise. In the evening, brilliant white illumination and fog are introduced to create vibrancy and drama. It was really beautiful, enchanting is the correct word, but then, I am easily enchanted :0)

For me, being a chemist, the most enchanting part of the trip was the tour out to the Kennecott Copper mines. At 2 ½-miles across, and ¾-mile deep, it is currently the world’s largest open pit mine and the largest man made excavation. The mine is so big that it can be seen from the space shuttle from outer space. Even before we got to the mine my excitement level was rising because on both sides leading to the mine, the mountains are scarred brown mountains with glimmering streaks down their sides. I have never seen anything like it. This occurs when hot water containing the minerals is almost extruded out of the mountain and runs down its sides. In time the water evaporates leaving a glimmering trail of minerals like copper silver and a little gold.

What is fascinating about the mine itself is that it is not one big hole that you peer into. It’s huge and stepped and beautifully colored. It has to be stepped, because open pit mines like this one are cut into benches, usually at 3-6 meters, at an incline known as the batter. The steps help rock falls continuing down to the bottom. It was very windy and noisy at the pit. It is really an interesting process, more so because they take ore containing less than 0.6 % copper and make it into 99.99 % pure copper. So one ton of ore roughly yields 12 pounds of pure copper. Sigh! Imagine being able to eat a ton of food and put on just 12 pounds. Anyway! The infrastructure required for an operation this size is impressive. Electric shovels can carry up to 56 cubic yards or 98 tons of ore in a single scoop. Ore is loaded into a fleet of 64 very large dump trucks which each carry 255 tons of ore at a time, at a cost of approximately $3 million per truck. They have these huge monster trucks, the diameter of each wheel is 12 feet and costs ~ 25000 $ each.
Here is an interesting fact: Pennies in the US today contain only about 2.5% copper.Reason: The value of a coin cannot be more than the cost to make it. So the U.S. Mint makes each penny from a slug of zinc with a layer of copper electroplated onto it.

The Utah State Capitol building is a little smaller than the one in DC, but equally impressive. It is located on a hill overlooking downtown Salt Lake (yup I trudged 7 blocks uphill to see it!). The dome of the Capitol is covered with Utah copper. There are 52 Corinthian columns. Throughout the grounds, on the building itself, and within the interior are countless beehive representations. The beehive is Utah's state symbol, representing the values of industry and cooperation. Today's Capitol is actually Utah's second. The first Capitol Building was in a small town called Fillmore, built there by federal decree, but only one wing of that building was finished before Salt Lake City was made the territorial capitol in 1855.

En route to the very big Salt Lake, we also peeked in to the Rice-Eceles Olympic stadium where the 2002 opening and closing games were held. What is interesting about this stadium is that it is lined with “field turf”. Field Turf uses a sand and crumb rubber mixture to mimic natural soil , and special plastic shafts are used to simulate blades of grass and have completely replaced astro turf. Crumb rubber by the way is made from scraps of truck tires.

The Great Salt Lake is actually located on a playa. It is The largest U.S. lake west of the Mississippi River and the 4th largest terminal lake (no outlet) in the world. About 75 miles long, and 28 miles wide, and covers 1,700 square miles it has a maximum depth of about 35 feet. Typically 3 to 5 times saltier than the ocean it is fish free, the largest aquatic critters are brine shrimp and brine flies and it is one of the largest migratory bird magnets in Western North America. The salts of the lake are primarily sodium chloride (common salt), although small amounts of other elements and salts are also present, including magnesium, potassium, sulfate, and carbonate. There are about 4.5 to 4.9 billion tons of salt in the lake, and about 2.2 million tons of salt enter the lake annually from surface- and ground-water flow. The salt industries extract about 2.5 million tons of sodium chloride and other salts and elements from the lake annually. Nah I didn’t taste the water. The place I was at was quiet smelly and full of rocks. I would have dearly loved to test my buoyancy in the water, but you know shy lil me!

So would I go back to SLC? Hmmm, actually Nope! Cause I will always remember it as the city where I cried, and how!. I had planned to take my parents on a balloon ride in Park city, and we were on tight schedule, so there was just that morning I could avail of that opportunity. We got up at 4.30 and got to Park city, cost me a 150 $ grrrrrrr, got to the launch site, but it was too windy so the launch was called off. Grrrrrrrrrrrrr that sure made me howl! Well maybe next time!