About via Utah

Who We Are, What, Why and How We Are Doing It

Who We Are

via Utah, or the Utah Project, is the dream of long-time photographer and former high school photography teacher Frank A. Langheinrich. `Frank loves Utah and wants to regale it properly. He is now retired and needs something to keep busy.

Why We Are Doing This

Frank has lived in Utah most of his life and, grew up in a family that traveled often and seemingly everywhere. He visited Arches before it became a national park, had only a short stretch of paved road, and almost no visitors. He saw Capitol Reef when no one knew what it was. He traveled to Goblin Valley, again, without paved roads or tourists, and Dead Horse Point when there were no barriers to prevent someone from falling or driving over the cliff. You get the idea. It is time to help preserve the state in an obvious way: photograph everything and share it with everyone. From this, the Utah Project was born. It also gives Frank the opportunity to visit every community, park, and unique place in Utah. We estimate that there will be about 800 locations photographed by the time this is done.

Project Scope

The scope of the project is to photograph every Utah city, town, unincorporated community, and ghost town and include them on this site. The five Utah national parks, eight national monuments, and forty-five state parks will be recognized as well. Utah is also full of interesting, sometimes quirky places which will be included to the extent possible. Frank wants this to be the ultimate guide to Utah, and the gold standard should anyone try this in any other state.

Methodology

The Utah Project will be carried in well-defined, segmented regions. During the winter of 2019-2020, what Frank believes to be all of the communities in Utah were identified. There are 473 cities, towns, unincorporated communities, ghost towns, and some industrial facilities shown on the official Utah State highway map. Some are just highway intersections. Some are nothing at all; however, if they have a circle on the map, it will be photographed, except as noted below. The state was divided into manageable areas, each of which can be photographed in one to three days. Locations will be added to the site as they are photographed and pictures processed, making this an exciting, evolving project. The first photographs were taken in late June 2020. Along the way, many interesting and unusual sites were discovered. These will also be included in the overall site.

There have been some delays in the overall plan, however. Some have been personal, some related to Covid. Some Native areas are closed to us in terms of photography are some Federal areas. We are negotiating to include these locations, but we will always respect the feelings of our indigenous peoples with regard to their lands, as well as any legal constraints.

Conventions and Research

Distances are given in both imperial and metric values with standard abbreviations: ft=feet, m=meters, mi=miles, km=kilometers.

This site is foremost a photographic essay and guide to Utah. Also of interest are historic, geographic, and geologic places and features of note. This requires research. Sources include, but are not limited to, Wikipedia, historic markers, interviews with residents or other knowledgeable sources, or information from the Utah Historical Society. Where a community has a web site, we refer to that as well. We make an annual financial contribution to Wikipedia to support their work. Utah Highway Map coordinates come directly from the official Utah Highway map, a copy of which is linked from our home page. Populations are found on the official Utah State highway map or as reported in some way by the community. Populations under 100 are not generally available, and therefore omitted. Latitude and longitude are displayed in degrees and decimal fractions of degrees as opposed to degrees, minutes and seconds. The former format is preferred by many modern users of the latitude/longitude system including Google Maps. Latitude/longitude coordinates and altitudes are generated by our equipment or provided by Google maps or Wikipedia. While we are very confident in the information provided herein, it is not guaranteed. If information is critical to you, you should refer to whatever additional resources may be available to you.

Photographers

Most of the photographs on this site will have been made by those associated with viaUtah; however, photographers outside of the viaUtah organization may be invited to submit photographs. Photographers whose pictures are used will be credited except for those made by Frank Langheinrich. All pictures published are protected by the photographers’ copyrights and we will have obtained permission to use said photographs.

Financial Disclosure

This is a labor of love. The project is currently funded entirely by its founder. At some time, prints of the published photographs may be offered for sale, advertising may be accepted and/or sponsorship(s) may be solicited to help finance this project.

Registration Program

We welcome emails at [email protected]. If we receive one from you you will be added to our list of subscribers. Those on the list will receive updates as new additions or other significant changes are made. We do not sell or otherwise make our email list available to anyone. If you would like to bypass the list, please make a note telling us so in your email(s) to us. If you would like to unsubscribe, just send us an email that says “Stop Emails.”