Perhaps it was fitting the name change for the West Valley Highway happened overnight - about the same time frame in which neighborhoods seem to pop up along its corridor.
Members of the 1993 Legislature didn't wait for a posthumous occasion when they rechristened the new road for a man a few months removed from political office. That man, who still remains alive and quite well, currently splits his time as a developer between homes in St. George and S. Jordan.Namesake stature aside, former Gov. Norm Bangerter jokes that while he doesn't receive any royalties, he's still watching with interest as the Bangerter Highway unfolds.
For starters, he grew up along its once-rural path. And the Bangerter's progress mirrors growth along the Wasatch Front, where since the late 1980s development has rolled across hayfields and old farming communities, turning country lanes into four-lane streets and spawning suburbs where sagebrush used to be.
The process will continue along the highway as the state in the next three or four years pushes the highway's six lanes on from West Valley City and West Jordan into South Jordan, Riverton and Bluffdale. Harbinger of greater growth wherever it goes, planners say the highway eventually will bridge I-15 into Draper, linking up finally with Sandy.
Resistant as some long-time residents are to the notion that it's only recently become a metropolis, Salt Lake City and environs are emerging today from quiet mountain enclave into something else entirely.
The area the Bangerter bisects perfectly illustrates the transition.
"One of the great things about this country is that it's had a frontier," noted Bangerter. "We've been at the edge of that frontier until recently. Today we see it closing in."
The highway, which today stretches from the Salt Lake International Airport to 9000 South, runs within a block and a half of both of Bangerter's grandfathers' former farms, which were going concerns for beet, hay and bean production in the 1930s and 1940s of Bangerter's boyhood.
"I could shoot a .22 in any direction from my house back then," reminisced the former governor.
Nowadays if you discharge a rifle in the vicinity you might plug one of the tens of thousands of motorists who course through the neighborhood via the Bangerter Highway and assorted cross streets. The highway alone carries close to 40,000 cars a day on its busiest stretches below 3100 South.
Its effect is felt from the sublime to the secular.
Members of the widely scattered flock who attend Bible Baptist Church on the southeast corner of 4700 South have cut their drive time from points south in half, thanks to the Bangerter.
"It's been a blessing for them," said Marshall Warneke, pastor of a congregation of 500 whose members can't blame traffic anymore if they're late for church.
Similarly, the Rocky Mountain West's largest supermarket chain knows a good thing when it sees it. Boise-based Albertsons Inc., which operates 715 stores in 19 states, a few years ago positioned an outlet at the future junction of 5400 South and the Bangerter and last year built another one just east of where the highway crosses 3500 South.
The road has opened up the west side of the Salt Lake Valley to homebuilders, too.
As good an example of old giving way to new is Bridlevale at Wallace Farms - a 110-home development on 35 acres at 3700 South and 4000 West.
"Everybody enjoyed this big, beautiful farm. It had pheasant on it, and it was just nice to watch the man who lived here raise his horses," said Elaine Powell, who was reared next door and today is the sales representative for the subdivision, whose developers have given the streets names like Sugar Beet Drive and Pumpkin Patch Circle.
"Most of our clients are drive-bys . . . the highway has been such a big asset for us," said Powell, who in her youth played hopscotch on the now-busy street in front of the project.
Though Powell concedes the progress also means loss, she said the best has been made of it.
"At least we're able to get an upgraded community on this land and not just a bunch of junk."
Conveniently located - thanks to the highway - just 10 minutes today from downtown Salt Lake City, brand-new Bridlevale houses are priced between $120,000 and $150,000, sit on a quarter-acre of ground and range in size from 1,257 to 1,895 square feet.
Industry predictably applauds the Bangerter's arrival as well.
"From a logistical point of view the highway is very beneficial to a lot of employers on the west side," said Louie Cononelos, a spokesman for Kennecott Utah Copper, which has 2,300 people on its payroll in ore-mining and processing facilities from Bingham Canyon to Garfield.
Car dealers call it a godsend, too.
"Sure, it's increased traffic," said Matthew Wilkenson, a salesman at the Larry H. Miller West Valley Used Car Center on the corner of 3500 South. With an average of 30 vehicles per minute passing the dealership on the Bangerter side of its high-profile corner, it's hard to complain about the road, but it has presented a problem or two.
Road construction hurt business at the dealership for several months, "and there've been a few pretty bad accidents," said Wilkenson. "One of them put a car right into our lot here."
That comes as no surprise to officers who police the road and say, welcome as it is, the Bangerter Highway is a microcosm of growing traffic problems along the Wasatch Front.
"Look at the skid marks at the intersections," offered Lt. Dan Fallows, commander of the Utah Highway Patrol's Salt Lake County contingent. "It's a very viable highway, but to maximize flow it should've been built to freeway standards."
With the resident-vehicle count in the four counties along the Wasatch Front approaching 1 million today (see related story), Fallows, assigned to the Salt Lake area since 1969, said traffic has far outpaced infrastructure and grown at a troubling rate in the last few years.
"It's gotten to the point at certain times - rush hour and Friday evenings - it's hard to go anyplace . . . sometimes it practically seems impossible. If you're at the traffic lights at 90th South and the interstate (I-15) you might wait five or six cycles."
Because of road and vehicle design improvements and lower speed limits, local highway travel is safer than it was a quarter-century ago, said Fallows, but because of almost daily traffic jams on major roads - especially I-15 - it's slower and more frustrating.
The solution as the state sees it is to throw more road money at the problem.
Little is being done by governments on any level in Utah to aggressively develop and promote mass transit after voters in 1992 defeated a sales-tax proposal that would've built 12 miles of light rail between Sandy and downtown Salt Lake City as part of a larger scheme to offer the service from Ogden to Provo.
Gov. Mike Leavitt in coming weeks will promote a budget for the next fiscal year that includes an additional $81 million for road projects and contribute $45 million to the establishment of a special highway-improvement fund.
Still, the specter of gridlock looms large.
"We have $2 billion worth of needs over the next 20 years," said Robert Perry, the Utah Department of Transportation's senior planner. "We probably have only a billion dollars worth of funds."
Still, if the past is any guide, the Bangerter Highway will proceed. In years past the state's general transportation budget never included Bangerter costs, but money was somehow found to continue the project.
Communities south of its current terminus are bracing for its encore in their neighborhoods.
South Jordan has anticipated its arrival for years and long ago began directing residential development away from its likely path. Few homes, if any, should be disturbed when the Bangerter makes its next leap southward along 3600 West, veering over to about 3900 West before it leaves the city.
Intersections are planned for the highway's meeting with 10400 South and 11400 South, and the city expects commercial interest in those corners to be forthcoming.
Residential development near the corridor is extensive, but only to about 10200 South. The city projects more home construction for that area anyway, but the Bangerter could bring it even sooner.
Anyone with property close, but not too close, to the highway's destined path can expect the phone to start ringing any day now, if it hasn't already.
"The old joke is everybody wants the freeway to be about three blocks from their house - close enough that it's easy to get on and far enough away that you can't quite hear it," said Mick Crandall, director of the Wasatch Front Regional Council, which has assisted in planning the road.
"It seems like there's a lot of undeveloped areas to the west out there, but it's not going to be undeveloped very long, road or no road. There's just too much pressure."
Kennecott is cleaning up about 1,200 acres of its land, commonly known as the South Jordan evaporation ponds, located just west of the proposed path. The property's future uses are teetering somewhere between permanent open space and residential subdivisions, and the city is preparing for either scenario.
An overpass will carry the Bangerter across 11800 South and into Riverton, where it will intersect with 12600 South. Its path from that point is only tentative, although UDOT will soon hold public hearings on a proposed route from Riverton, through Bluffdale, and on to I-15 in Draper at about 13550 South.
As it stands now, the Bangerter appears destined to go south through Riverton along what would be 3900 West until it is a few blocks north of 13800 South. There it would curve eastward along the north side of the existing 13800 South roadway, plowing headlong into the side of the brick rambler that former Riverton Mayor James Warr thought he would call home for the rest of his life.
"There's open fields all behind me, and they could put it through the fields easily, but the last time I talked to UDOT they said they wouldn't want to split up farms," Warr said. "It's strange they're willing to tear down houses and they're not willing to split up farms."
The proposed route would knock out a cluster of homes where his neighbors live and put a six-lane highway in the backyards of others. The highway would jump to the south side of 13800 South at roughly 2700 West, then hop back to the north side at about 2100 West before dipping south into Bluffdale at Redwood Road.
The proposed route is designed to inflict the least amount of pain on existing residents, but there's no getting around the fact that some folks will just have to pack up and clear out.
"Once they get through east of 27th West, they have to go through a subdivision and tear out 20 to 30 houses and ruin a whole neighborhood," Warr said.
Some fairly recent developments would be impacted, too. People who thought they were sacrificing a short commute for the quiet life may soon have that scenario flip-flopped through no choice of their own.
Gayla Bodell of Riverton's planning and zoning department said new residents have been coming into the office at the rate of one or two a month expressing surprise that the Bangerter could go in beside their new home.
"A lot of people buy without checking into things," she said. "We have a stamp on the building permit that says, `Are you aware that this home could be within 300 to 500 feet of the Bangerter Highway?' but by then it's almost too late."
One resident along 13800 South got so tired of seeing people move in without knowing about the road, she put up a sign warning of its coming.
Folks in Bluffdale remember talk of the Bangerter's impending arrival as far back as the 1950s, but only since about 1985 have any potential routes been mentioned. UDOT has thrown out a plethora of ideas for taking the Bangerter through the city of 3,100, all of which have been met with great disdain by residents.
Since Riverton residents weren't too happy about having the road in their neck of the woods either, the future route of the Bangerter evolved into something of a family feud, pitting neighbors on both sides of the cities' borders against each other.
"We've had a big fight with Bluffdale, and they've had a lot of bad feelings in that city itself because of the road," said Vicki Densley, who appears destined to lose her home on the north side of 13800 South in Riverton.
The compromise proposal that has the Bangerter following 13800 South places it roughly along that border, until it enters an undeveloped and less attractive area of east Bluffdale. From there, it likely will take to the air on bridges crossing the Jordan River and hook up with I-15 in the heart of west Draper. Construction of that interchange could be completed by the year 2000.
Planners say residential and commercial development could bloom all along the Bangerter, including office complexes and perhaps light industrial centers, where allowed.
Beyond the I-15 connection, UDOT officials say, the Bangerter's future path is less certain. But Draper's community development staff has taken the lead in planning for the highway to meet up with an extension of Highland Drive. The city's proposed road plan calls for Highland to head to the northeast along the benches, past the planned 1,700-unit South Mountain subdivision, which fronts an even larger proposed development along Traverse Mountain.
Highland would then connect with 2000 East, which exists only in segments in Draper, and traffic would follow that route through Sandy and into Salt Lake City.
Dozens of new two- and three-story luxury homes in the $300,000 and $400,000 range are perched along Draper's sleepy east side. Some sit within a few dozen yards of a disconnected portion of 2000 East, which is little more than a paved driveway today. Properties along it contain a 50-foot easement, but Realtors aren't sure exactly what to tell potential buyers.
"You can't even find anybody who knows what's going to happen, that's the most difficult part of it, so it makes it extremely difficult to sell homes," said Tim Alexander of Remax Brokers. "I wish I knew what to tell people."
If the loop is to be completed, 2000 East would have to be extended through Dimple Dell Regional Park, across the sensitive environment of Dry Creek, to its current southern terminus near the Alta Canyon Sports Center at about 9500 South.
UDOT has plans to widen existing segments of 2000 East beginning this summer, setting the stage for the future union. If all goes as tentatively planned, travelers sometime after the turn of the century will be able to complete a loop of nearly 70 miles from the airport, around the county and back into downtown Salt Lake.
By that time, other highway proposals will be sparking interest and concern. And newcomers may wonder, "So just who is that road named after, anyway?"