When a cappuccino shop opened up on Main Street last year, it spelled the dawn of a new day for a town unaccustomed to such amenities.
"It was the beginning of the end," laughed Wasatch County planning director Bob Mathis, who, like most local members of the predominant religion, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, faithfully follows the LDS doctrine of eschewing coffee.But a friend dragged Mathis into the place, and he became a regular at "Twist," which sits in the midst of small-town Americana across the street from an old-fashioned hardware store and next to an aged, single-screen movie theater.
Mathis comes back, not for the espresso, but for the pastries baked daily at 6 a.m. by owners Traci Palmer and Rich Wistisen, a 20-something couple among a growing legion of Wasatch Front urban refugees migrating in recent times to the eastern slope of the Wasatch Mountains.
Palmer and Wistisen live in a snow-covered cabin five miles from "Twist" and during the winter make part of their short commute by snowmobile. Wistisen rises before dawn to fire up the ovens. Palmer runs the place during the day after her partner drives a half-hour to his other job, as a stock analyst in Provo.
Business has been slow but steady, in line with expectations.
"We got the smallest espresso-maker you can buy, and it's big enough," said Palmer, who has yet to draw a salary but might do so this year.
The promise of country solace is what draws once-urban residents like these to the Heber Valley, said Tony Dold, a local Century 21 Realtor who counts among his recent clients a West Jordan family abandoning their house and quarter-acre lot in the suburbs of Salt Lake County for a single, scenic acre in an out-of-the-way Heber development called Wild Mare Farms.
"It's peaceful," said Helen Robinson, who with her husband, Lance, and their five children anticipates finding an easier pace of life along the Wasatch back.
"It takes 20 minutes to get anyplace at all around here (in West Jordan)," Robinson said. "You can drive across that entire valley up there in 10 minutes."
The attraction outweighs the considerable expense of changing lifestyles. The Robinsons' five-bedroom, three-bathroom home in suburban Salt Lake County is worth perhaps $140,000. A similar dwelling in the Heber Valley is closer to $200,000.
But the latter comes with land enough for a little breathing room.
"That's very appealing," Robinson said, adding that her husband's daily drive to work at the Veteran's Administration Medical Center near the University of Utah is 45 minutes from West Jordan. It's 45 minutes from Heber City, too.
"The difference is, we'll get to live in the country," she said.
"Everybody's interested in the commute, what happens in the wintertime," added Dold, noting that the Heber Valley is some 1,400 feet higher in elevation than Salt Lake City, though annual snowfall is about the same.
"I tell them the truth, that they do an outstanding job in keeping the roads open and maybe even do a little overkill on some storms."
"Of course, I also tell everybody they should have a four-wheel-drive in their repertoire of vehicles."
If the valley's biggest asset is pastoral charm, it's a commodity that might not last as developers plot scores of projects that would bring thousands of new homes to the area.
North of Heber City, along the now-unpopulated banks of the four-year-old Jordanelle Reservoir, a combination of 6,500 houses, condominiums and hotel rooms have been proposed. Sewer service is in place and water connections are imminent. The county has received application for another 1,000 or so housing units in other unincorporated neighborhoods.
The Timberlakes subdivision, a former summer-home development eight miles east of Heber City, has become an enclave of year-round homes and a hot, comparatively affordable property, the best of its remaining 1,400 lots selling briskly in the $35,000-and-up range.
Meantime, Heber City itself is processing proposed developments that include 1,000 homes. In Midway, a few miles west, some 1,200 new units are planned.
Commercial and government development is also growing. The county last year built a new jail. Utah Valley State College has started a Heber City satellite to its main Utah County campus. Earlier this year, Arby's opened a local franchise, complementing other fast-food icons that include McDonald's, Subway and Pizza Hut.
Day's Thriftway Market, a locally owned 25-year-old institution that competes with IGA, the only other grocery store of any size in town, this spring breaks ground on a 50,000-square-foot building that is better located and twice the size of its current quarters, according to owner Gerald Day.
The move follows news that Albertson's, the Boise-based retail giant, begins construction soon on a supermarket in the middle of Heber City.
Such progress is reminiscent of Draper, the small-town-turned-sprawling suburb at the south end of the Salt Lake Valley, where a strong rural ambience still evident five years ago has since been gobbled up by housing projects.
Wasatch County seems behind the curve, and struggles to keep up with the boom.
Mathis' office staff has doubled from two to four people this year, and the county has created an entire new inspection department to stay abreast of a construction crush that saw almost 250 building permits issued in 1996, up almost 70 percent over 1990, a couple of years before the boom began.
"People can still recognize the Heber Valley of 1976 in 1997," said Mathis, who has lived in Midway for 21 years. "But I'm not sure they'll recognize it 10 years from now."
Meanwhile, the valley manages somehow to cling to its character.
Though Money magazine last year dubbed Heber City one of the "50 Hottest Little Boomtowns in America," the distinction is worn quietly. The after-hours telephone recording at the courthouse greets callers with a friendly voice that says "Howdy." The county's 12,585 residents share the same telephone prefix. Trout fishermen along the Provo River can easily find a spot to themselves and walk-ons at the valley's two golf courses rarely have a wait of much length. There are only four stoplights in the county, and at Midway - where growth is occurring almost faster than anyplace else in the Heber Valley - horses play in a corral within spitting distance of the town's new post office.
Down the street, "The Hamlet," brand-new condominiums styled after the heritage of Swiss immigrants who settled Midway, are touted as "the most affordable new housing" in Wasatch County, listing for $110,900 and $120,000, depending on the model, which come in two varieties of Swiss styles.
"The mountains up here really do look like Switzerland," said John Dester, offering his standard pitch for the condominiums, which have proven an almost overnight hit. All but four of the 27 units that went under construction last July have been sold and the second phase of the 144-unit project has just begun.
Dester said buyers have included part-time residents from England and Iceland and all patrons are equally smitten by the area's "slower, small-town feel."
No major interstate courses through the valley, industry is so low-key as to be virtually non-existent, and open space still abounds. Thus, silence is among the features that separate Heber City and surroundings from Park City to the north and Provo to the southwest.
Darkness is also more plentiful.
"The sky here is good," said amateur astronomer Mike Soper, who moved his small family to Wasatch County from a Washington, D.C., suburb last year, where stargazing was all but impossible. Beside their solar-heated-and-cooled home, Soper and his wife, Angela, are constructing a small observatory.
Though he isn't a member of the dominant church, which demographers estimate makes up some 80 percent of the local population, Soper said he fits in fine.
"People we know (who live out of state) say, `But everybody's Mormon there,' and I say, `Well, I'm not, but I've got some good friends who are.' "
The Sopers and their neighbors in Interlaken Estates are within sight of Wasatch Mountain State Park, frequented this winter by a herd of 40 elk driven to lower-than-usual elevations by heavy snowfall. A brood of mountain lions live in a rocky outcropping above Interlaken, and deer are a daily sight in the surrounding fields, which stretch for miles to the south. Porcupine and moose wander through the neighborhood on occasion.
A fund-raiser for nonprofit groups and a former senior vice president at PBS, Soper works out of his hillside house above Midway, staying in touch with clients via the information superhighway.
Sensing the growing presence of just such a population, nearby homeowners John and Carol Probst eight months ago installed a bank of modems in their basement in a venture aimed at offering low-cost Internet service and competition for a pair of other local providers.
Today, "Shadowlink" has 125 customers who pay $19.95 a month for unlimited access to the Internet, a rate that is typical and well-established in more urban areas but relatively new to the Heber Valley. Though the Probsts had to wait awhile for US WEST to install enough capacity to meet demand, they now boast a subscriber-to-modem ratio of 9-1, twice the industry average.
Carol Probst said part of the company's success is due to a mere $10 fee charged customers who want a hands-on house call to get started.
"We believe in service," she explained. "It's a small-town thing."
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
High country sprawl
The biggest change since pioneers settled the area 130 years ago has come to the back of the Wasatch Mountains, where once-obscure locales like Huntsville, Kimball Junction and Midway have become popular and booming respites from the urban rat race.
Wasatch County
Population:
1990...........10,089
1996...........12,505
25% increase
Square miles: 1,191