Paul Gu, the Silicon Valley founder of a $3 billion AI lending company, pored over his spreadsheet.
The rows and columns weren’t filled with financial statistics, they were dedicated to calculating which was the best state in the nation to plant his newly formed family. And there was only one clear winner.
“If you looked for the intersection of places that had both a high rate of economic growth and were high on family and community values, you end up with basically just Utah,” Gu told the Deseret News.
This combination of economic outlook and family orientation was unique in the “developed world,” Gu said. So he and his wife decided to move to a place where they didn’t know a single person: Alpine, Utah.
Gu has since become an unabashed ambassador of the state and a member of a project he hopes will help it be “bold and up front” about what sets it apart so it attracts exactly those people who want to add to it.
The latest startup proposal Gu is a part of, which intends to do just that, has quickly captured the attention of the state’s top elected officials.
Utah leaders from across the political spectrum have united this year to create the Pioneer Trail, which aims to keep Salt Lake City rooted in the state’s unique pioneer values as it prepares to welcome the world again.
Around 5 million people are expected to attend the six-month Salt Lake Temple open house in 2027. That’s about 28,000 visitors per day. The 2034 Winter Olympics are anticipated to have more than 122,000 daily visitors.
In March, top legislators prioritized $10 million, doubling the amount requested by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, to build Phase I of the Pioneer Trail, a new landmark to be partially completed by the start of the open house next April.
The 2-mile path will connect key pillars of state history, from Temple Square to the Utah Capitol, with trail markers, public monuments, increased access to historic buildings and a remodeled Memory Grove Park.
Essential to the plan is the concept of preserving Utah, and Salt Lake City’s story while inviting others to participate in it.
“We’ve invested billions of dollars ... in the commercial core of this city over the last five years, and we’re asking for tens of millions of dollars for the cultural soul of the city,” Pioneer Trail Foundation chairman Ryan Beck said.
Just as the upcoming Winter Olympics has been a catalyst for revitalizing Utah’s capital, the Pioneer Trail is being used as an opportunity to tie together several city and state initiatives to tell one cohesive narrative.
It is a chronicle that covers settlement by early Latter-day Saints; contributions from Native Americans, the mining industry and outdoor adventurers; and explosive growth driven by a thriving technology ecosystem.
Those behind the trail seek to capture what makes Utah peculiar with a word that binds all Utahns together: pioneer.
Why a trail?
Beck moved from Bountiful to Boston after graduating from Brigham Young University to launch a career in business. When he returned to his native Utah during COVID-19, he said it was like seeing the state for the first time.
“I didn’t realize what I had, and didn’t realize what this place was,” Beck told the Deseret News. “And so much of what is good about the state is downstream from that history and our cultural values.”
Beck began talking with friends about a project modeled after Boston’s world-famous Freedom Trail, which takes tourists on a two-mile journey past more than a dozen revolutionary icons, but with a Beehive State spin.
Beck’s group of founders had seen how fast-growing areas, like Portland and San Francisco, had let economic booms unmoor them from what made them great places to move, start a company and form a family in the first place.
What Utah needed was an accessible cultural anchor helping people from different backgrounds to see what the state was all about. Beck presented his idea to top policymakers in May 2025. A year later, he is ready to break ground.
The trail — demarcated by cement plaques from O.C. Tanner and maybe a copper line donated by Kennecott mine — will run past Temple Square along South Temple before turning north up State Street toward the Capitol.
An offshoot will take visitors to Brigham Young’s pioneer cemetery, the Cathedral of the Madeleine and the First Presbyterian Church, while the main line will proceed to the Capitol building, including the brand new Museum of Utah.
This first stage of the project will hopefully be unveiled to coincide with the temple open house, Beck said.
More than a trail
But Beck’s vision, endorsed last month by lawmakers, is much broader than a walking trail.
It will also include an overhaul of Council Hall — a 19th-century government building, now home to the Office of Tourism and Film Commission. It will be transformed into what Beck believes will be a state treasure.
Prestigious Utah chef Milo Carrier has agreed to open a second restaurant on the first floor, Beck said. On the second floor, Utah State University has agreed to host a debate hall that could become “the Oxford Union of Utah.”
“The hope there is to actually build a new institution in Utah that can live for a long, long time,” Beck said.
In addition to creating greater public access to Council Hall, which Beck said will include a highly curated historical library, the Pioneer Trail will open up Capitol Hill’s White Chapel and turn its parking lot into a plaza.
The goal is “activation” of public spaces: This winter the plaza will become Utah’s first five-week Christmas market.
Pioneer Trail Foundation board member Patrick Mason, who is the chair of Latter-day Saint history and culture at Utah State University, said this focus on community and civic dialogue emerges from Utah’s story while also expanding it.
“I love this idea of pioneering being something that anybody can tap into,” Mason told the Deseret News. “What we want people to do is, as they walk this trail, to think about what pioneering means to them.”
The trail’s second phase goes even further to create spaces that reflect where Utah came from and where it can go.
Phase II of the Pioneer Trail includes a total “reimagining” of the Memory Grove Park in City Creek Canyon to be a “downtown garden,” that Beck hopes can become “like the Arlington Cemetery of Salt Lake City.”
Some investors in the Pioneer Trail see the project as a way to catalyze a series of other changes over the next several years, like improving the Ensign Peak Trail, according to Beck.
A bipartisan commitment
This will require more time, more money and more buy-in from the state, city and stakeholders.
Since receiving an initial investment of $300,000 from This is the Place Foundation, which is run by several current or former state employees, the project has received $2 million from prolific philanthropists Gail Miller and Kem Gardner.
But similar projects have typically been around 60%-70% government funded, Beck said.
The Pioneer Trail Foundation plans to ask the Legislature for millions more in 2027 and 2028. They have also received a commitment of $1.9 million from Salt Lake City specifically for improvements made to Memory Grove Park.
In a statement to the Deseret News, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall expressed gratitude for the project, explaining why she thought it was worth public investment to increase “connectivity” in the city’s growing downtown.
“The Pioneer Trail will share important history markers and beautify downtown walking routes,” she said. “It will honor our historical roots and support the City’s ongoing efforts to create a livable and welcoming community.”
The Pioneer Trail has had the rare success of crossing political, religious and regional divides in state government.
The governor marveled in a statement at how the Pioneer Trail has mobilized city, state and community leaders “ahead of the Olympics — when we will once again invite the world to experience the very best of Utah.”
The project transforms downtown “into a living narrative of how Utah was built” through a “uniquely immersive” interaction with the past, Senate President Stuart Adams and House Speaker Mike Schultz said in a statement.
“As our state continues to grow and welcome people from around the world, investments like this ensure our history is not only remembered but experienced and carried forward for generations to come,” they said.
Is it worth it?
In the final days of the 2026 legislative session, the Pioneer Trail wound up in the middle of a debate on state spending.
Rep. Nelson Abbott, R-Orem, momentarily stalled the supplemental budget, saying the project — which was funded via four different sources due to a tight budget year — had not gone through the proper channels.
While he does not oppose the concept of the Pioneer Trail, it did not receive a typical committee hearing or recommendation, Abbott said, adding that he has yet to see details for how the money is intended to be used.
“Taxpayers deserve more than a ‘trust me’ approach,” Abbott told the Deseret News. “At this point we’re not really funding a trail we’re just funding a big question mark. ... Before we pay for the path, we need to see the map.”
Another member of the Pioneer Trail Foundation board, Natalie Gochnour, director of the University of Utah’s Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, insists that history has shown that Utah’s ability to brand itself has major benefits.
This happened with the 2002 Winter Olympics — where the state strengthened its reputation for beauty, competency and kindness — and will again be the case when the Pioneer Trail becomes “the gateway to all of Utah,” she said.
“People that come to Utah and experience the Pioneer Trail will leave with a greater understanding of what this state is, what it represents, who we are,“ Gochnour told the Deseret News. ”And I think that pays huge dividends to our state.”
Beyond connecting Salt Lake’s top two visitor sites, Gochnour said the Pioneer Trail will reinforce the reality that Utah’s economic and social status flows from “our norms, our behavioral beliefs, our level of social cohesion.”
And that is the balance Beck believes the Pioneer Trail is trying to strike: recognizing Utah succeeds because it is different from anywhere else, but remembering it can only continue to do so if it extends that invitation to the world.
This question started it all for Beck: “Is there a way for us to use a walking trail like that in this really dense historic corridor downtown to both reaffirm the best of our story, but also use it as a basis to reimagine what comes next?”
Beck believes the answer wouldn’t have been possible 15 years ago, or 15 years from now. But with the world at the doorstep, state leaders have eagerly embraced the idea, even though the exact route is still in the works.