In 1644, a Dutch engineer named Adam Wiebe built a suspension transport system in Gdańsk, Poland, using cable and wicker baskets to move the earth that was needed to fortify the city perimeter. From a nearby hill, it carried tons of soil across the Motława River, using the descending weight of the baskets and pulleys to power their cycle. Welcome, a humble contraption: the world’s first gondola lift.
It took over 200 years, but Wiebe’s engineering marvel eventually transformed into the gondola we know today, complete with cable cars full of wide-eyed passengers, suspended through mountain terrain steep enough to give you butterflies.
The first passenger gondola opened in the Dolomite mountains of South Tyrol, Italy, in 1908. It was a hit. Reliable, easy to service, safe — and a wonder to behold. In the decades to come, gondolas became a staple mode of transportation in European mountain towns. American ski resorts followed.
To float above the canyons, the rivers, the teetering ridgelines leading to mountain peaks — it’s a magical experience for passengers. And out of harm’s way — for the most part — when it comes to mountain travel. Gondolas aren’t at risk for avalanches or black ice or backed-up traffic. This is one of several reasons Utah’s Department of Transportation wants to build a gondola to take passengers up Little Cottonwood Canyon in Utah’s Wasatch Mountains.
But this wouldn’t be any gondola. When constructed, it will be the world’s longest — nearly one-and-a-half times longer than the current title holder in Serbia (which stretches over five miles itself). The official reasoning for constructing this gondola is to alleviate congested traffic — and the resulting emissions — that pile up nearly every weekend in the winter on the one road leading in and out of the canyon.
However, that’s not the entire picture. From a bird’s-eye view, certain aspects of the gondola project aren’t as simple as they first seem. The roughly $700 million endeavor would be funded by taxpayers, but the gondola will service two private businesses (Alta and Snowbird resorts) during the winter months (aka ski season). No stops will be made for passengers to access trailheads and public lands. Then there’s the threat to the conservation of public lands. The 22 towers (stretching as high as 262 feet) that carry the gondola will forever change the protected public lands of Little Cottonwood Canyon. Those opposing the gondola claim that visible towers will redefine the view of the canyon, recreation areas will be destroyed, and access to public lands will be more limited than before.
Critics of the project say UDOT conducted a questionable National Environmental Protection Act process to get the gondola construction approved. NEPA is a federal law that mandates all large governmental developments investigate the environmental impacts before a project can break ground. The final environmental impact statements and Record of Decision that Utah’s transportation department produced are now the subject of three separate lawsuits that could halt the project. The suits, which have been combined by the federal court, allege that UDOT pushed the gondola option through without meeting NEPA requirements — failing to thoroughly consider other possible solutions to ease traffic and neglecting to acknowledge all the potential negative environmental impacts should the gondola construction begin.
When UDOT received approval to conduct and oversee its own environmental impact studies from the Federal Highway Administration, it became only one of seven state municipalities in the country ever to be granted the privilege. Should UDOT win in court, the implications could reverberate far beyond Utah. It could set a new standard where states would be allowed to make far-reaching decisions about development in protected federal lands with limited review safeguards. If this happened, the environmental protection that NEPA provides could be curtailed on thousands of current and future development projects on public lands.
“If this EIS stands, it provides a roadmap for states who want to completely bypass 30 years of NEPA process,” says Bob Douglass, a board member of the advocacy group Friends of Little Cottonwood Canyon, a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits. In other words, this could inspire future developers and agencies to skimp on environmental reviews knowing that a less thorough review will still stand in court.
The tensions between conservation and development — such as those occurring in Little Cottonwood Canyon — are becoming increasingly urgent and intense.
The problem started with a line of traffic. On busy days, cars sit bumper-to-bumper on Little Cottonwood Canyon’s state Route 210. What should be a 30-minute drive from Salt Lake City stretches on for hours during peak winter travel days. For years, a handful of solutions have been discussed: Avalanche tunnels? Widening the road? Tolling? More public bus transportation? But when UDOT completed the multiyear NEPA review in 2023, it recommended a gondola.
According to UDOT, it seems like the most reliable solution. A gondola can float above avalanche paths and wouldn’t be fazed by snowy conditions, barring extreme winter storms. It would feasibly have low maintenance costs over 30 years (despite an estimated initial investment of $729 million). And, importantly, it can accommodate a growing population. The gondola, per UDOT’s data, will help transport nearly 3,300 people per hour via combined transportation with buses and cars, too, and has the potential to reduce traffic in the canyon by 30 percent, eliminating the need to expand the highway with an additional two lanes. Alongside the reduction in car emissions, once up and running, developers have assured that the gondola will be carbon neutral. That’s a strong environmental claim. But local stakeholders point out that preserving public lands and natural resources should be step one for conserving Little Cottonwood Canyon.
By December 2023, three different federal lawsuits against UDOT hit the courts. Though the details of each plaintiff’s arguments differ, they were similar enough to be combined into a single case last April. The aim is to prevent the gondola from being built until the impacts are more thoroughly reviewed, at the very least.
The first suit was filed by six named individuals and two advocacy groups — Friends of Alta, a local nonprofit, and the International Outdoor Recreation Asset Alliance, a Utah-based nonprofit focused on protecting public land against development. It argues that UDOT stepped outside its delegated authority from the Federal Highway Authority by approving a solution to the transportation issue with something that is not technically a highway.
Salt Lake City, the town of Sandy and their shared Metropolitan Water District filed the second suit together, requesting that the environmental impact studies be expanded to include what building a gondola might do to the region’s water supply, the majority of which comes from the Wasatch Mountains. “Given that these canyons and the neighboring canyons provide so much of the public water supply, we wanted the actual purpose and need of the … process to include not only solving the transportation problem, but also protecting the water supply,” says Laura Briefer, the director of Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities. “That did not happen.”
The third suit was filed by the Citizens’ Committee to Save Our Canyons. It not only names UDOT, but also its executive director, Carlos Braceras, and the U.S. Forest Service. The U.S. Forest Service is included as a defendant because, as the administrators of the public land where the gondola would sit, it’s a federal agency with a specific responsibility to consider what the towering structures would do to the “character” of the wilderness. Conflict of interest makes an appearance, too. The suit suggests that the reason the NEPA process was unusually limited and “arbitrary” is because “the private developer who proposed the … gondola alternative … was in fact the former President of the State Senate, who was closely involved with state legislation authorizing and funding this project.”
Wayne Niederhauser, the former state Senate president named in the lawsuit, says those claims are “interesting but inaccurate.”
“My involvement in the NEPA process was no different from that of any other individual or organization, and any information I provided was through the public comment process as a citizen,” he wrote in a statement to Deseret Magazine. “The assertion that I had a preconceived stance on the gondola as an elected official is also false.” Niederhauser says that during his time as a state senator, his efforts to find solutions for Little Cottonwood Canyon’s traffic problem focused on smaller, practical implementations — like avalanche control and increased busing. These are some of the same solutions that critics of the project are pointing to now as necessary precursors to the gondola.
Catherine Kanter, Salt Lake County’s deputy mayor of regional operations, says that the lawsuits intend to force UDOT to implement “common sense solutions” to the transportation problem first and foremost. These include tolling, or any number of increased busing options, which don’t cost the environment or taxpayers nearly as much. “We believe that (the gondola) is not necessary,” Kanter says. “And it certainly isn’t the most practical or … adaptable.”
Developers and supporters of the gondola suggest the same common sense applies to the proven, efficient method of moving people up mountains across the world. Aside from UDOT itself — which only responded to requests for comment on this article with publicly available documents — these supporters are represented by a group of entities calling itself Gondola Works. The coalition includes the ski resorts Snowbird and Alta, two PR companies and CW Management, founded by two former Utah politicians, including Niederhauser. Snowbird — the resort — bought several acres of property at the base of the canyon. Snowbird’s president and general manager, Dave Fields, says it’s just enough land for the base station and the requisite parking.
This blurring of the lines between public and private interest is raised in the lawsuits as a prelude to how future private development projects on public lands may be carried out. For those in support of the project, it’s a small sticking point that obscures the potential for a viable solution to a long-standing issue. “Gondolas are worldwide renowned as the solution to transportation problems,” says Chris McCandless, a former Sandy city councilman and president of CW Management. “Only here in Utah are we condemning them.”
But as the case unfolds, the tensions of private development vs. public lands and conservation vs. urban planning won’t be a matter of public opinion, it will be a decision of the law. Bill Eubanks, owner of Eubanks & Associates — a public interest law firm focused on environmental issues — says that the decision of a court or federal judge hinges on the thoroughness of the NEPA review process.
“As long as they have checked off all their boxes and the agency has done a detailed look at all the things that they should have looked at, then they typically win in court if they’re challenged,” he says. But “if they gave short shrift to something at any of those stages, then they’re vulnerable to having a setback for further review.”
If UDOT loses the case, the court will vacate the gondola decision, meaning “it’s no longer on the books, it’s not operative, no work can be done under it because it’s now unlawful,” says Eubanks. If this happens, UDOT will be at a crossroads. It could start the entire review process over from the beginning, which would mean several more years of administrative processing and the subsequent costs to taxpayers, or it could do nothing and let the traffic problem continue.
Eubanks believes there is ample evidence that there wasn’t a thorough environmental review to meet federal law. But how the court rules will be based on what is found in the nearly 200,000 pages of administrative records UDOT provides to the courts. If those documents prove to the court that UDOT did perform a thorough environmental review, then it would be given the green light to move forward with the project and build the gondola. In that reality, it becomes clear to federal and state agencies — as well as potential developers — that reviews with limited scope and less thorough impact studies for future developments are not only allowable but defensible in court.
“Gondolas are worldwide renowned as the solution to transportation problems. Only here in Utah are we condemning them.”
Take a drive up Little Cottonwood Canyon today, and you probably wouldn’t guess that anything’s afoot. The traffic backs up. The red glow of brake lights stretches on. That’s because the current lawsuit had an unintended consequence: UDOT has halted its mitigation efforts in the canyon. It seems that the efforts to implement tolling, increase busing and any of the other low-cost solutions identified in the original plan for phased implementation are at a standstill. Though UDOT has funding and approval from the state Legislature to spend money on the more “common sense” solutions, they’ve stated publicly that they won’t do any traffic mitigation until the lawsuits are resolved. Maybe that’s an effort to save tax dollars. Maybe it’s a symptom of a bureaucratic zero-sum game that, to some, seems completely out of step with the good intentions of trying to find a solution in the first place.
With growing populations, expanding metropolitan areas and a growing economy, the tensions between conservation and development, such as those occurring in Little Cottonwood Canyon, are becoming increasingly urgent and intense across the nation. These conflicts are crucial as they establish the groundwork for the future of protected lands and the burgeoning economies in the West.
This is why Douglass, from Friends of Little Cottonwood Canyon, is so concerned about the ruling on the lawsuit. If the defense wins, he worries a less thorough approach to environmental review could become common among developers.
On a warm, sunny November day, a small group from UDOT Traffic and Trails and U.S. Forest Service officials arrived in the canyon. Carrying maps on clipboards with pens at the ready, they passed a few folks chalking up and cheering each other on through climbs at the Secret Garden Boulders, which sit just a stone’s throw off SR-210. One official remarked on how close the boulders were to the road.
Julia Geisler was here to show the UDOT team just that. As the executive director of the Salt Lake Climbers Alliance, Geisler strives for her organization to maintain a good relationship with UDOT because her ultimate goal is to ensure these public lands remain accessible to climbers and other recreationists. Walking from boulder to boulder, she pointed out all the ways that different solutions — a gondola, increased bus service, widening the highway in the canyon — might impact these beloved recreational areas in Little Cottonwood Canyon.
After a short walk, the group arrived at the Alpenbock Loop.
Located near the mouth of the canyon, it’s part of a popular climbing area, where steep, gray granite walls stretch upward and small parking lots are filled with climbers when the weather is right. In August, the Alpenbock Loop became the first group of climbing routes in history to be added to the National Register of Historic Places. The designation means its historical significance for its relevance to the culture and growth of the sport of climbing is officially recognized and protected. But if the gondola is built, two climbing boulders in the area might be destroyed to house one of the 22 towers. Every 30 seconds, as climbers ascend, a cable car will travel behind them, suspended for miles up the canyon. The entire experience of climbing along the Alpenbock Loop, Geisler says, will be changed.
Geisler says UDOT didn’t consider the gondola’s impact on recreational views as important in its EIS. Yet, when Geiser’s team hired outside consultants to read the thousands of public comments made during the review, she says they found that every comment submitted by climbers mentioned the importance of the view.
To some, it’s a small price to pay. McCandless, of CW Management, says that the gondola will carry more people, more quickly, and be less environmentally damaging to run than the number of cars and buses needed to meet the ever-growing demand on the canyon. He believes that, over time, the impact of building a carbon-
neutral gondola will be far less damaging than the pollution from increased traffic and wider highways. He’s quick to point out, too, that there are more than 60 avalanche paths along Little Cottonwood Canyon’s highway. No matter how wide the road or how many buses are in transit, when the snow slides, only a gondola would be able to keep running.
McCandless thinks that if nothing significant is done to address the traffic issue, it will persist long after anyone discussing it today is gone. “We have to fix this problem, or the people in the future will look back at those of us who have passed and say mean things about us,” he says. “And rightfully so.”
For those on the other side of the lawsuit, that wisdom works both ways. As Geisler says, there will always be a new condo, a housing project or a new road that’s encroaching, and so someone has to advocate for public lands, for undeveloped natural resources and for the places where nature is our greatest asset. “Because once it’s gone, it’s gone. You can save a place a thousand times, but you can lose it only once.”
Correction/Clarification: An earlier version of this story stated that the gondola would help move up to 4,000 people per hour. According to UDOT, the gondola, combined with buses and cars, would move up to 3,300 people per hour. The story also stated that a gondola would not be fazed by snowy conditions. Extreme winter storms could affect a gondola’s operation.
This story appears in the March 2025 issue of Deseret Magazine. Learn more about how to subscribe.