Utah Facts

William Coltharp needed brick for the new Bank of Vernal. Wagon freight into remote Utah cost twice as much as parcel post. So in 1916 he had the post office deliver the brick instead. It went out in 50-pound packages, ten bricks at a time. About 15,000 bricks later, the Postal Service capped mail shipments at 200 pounds a day. The bank still stands, brick facade and all.

First-cousin marriages are legal in Utah, so long as both parties are 65 or older!

A motorcyclist slid underneath a burning BMW near Utah State University. The first bystanders tried to lift the 4,000-pound vehicle but couldn't budge it. Then more strangers joined - construction workers in hard hats, students with backpacks, a man in a suit - until a dozen people lifted the burning car off the ground while one man dragged the unconscious 21-year-old to safety.

A forest of 47,000 aspen trees in Utah is actually one single organism. Every trunk connects underground to the same root system. The colony is called Pando, and it covers 106 acres. It weighs an estimated 6,000 metric tons - one of the heaviest living things ever found. That root system may be up to 16,000 years old. One tree. 80 football fields.

At Zion National Park, the last half-mile to Angels Landing runs along a knife-edge ridge. Drops of about 1,000 feet fall away on both sides. A single metal chain, bolted into the rock for about a century, is the only handhold. So many hikers wanted to try it that Zion had to ration it. Since 2022, a daily lottery decides who gets a permit for that stretch. Winners still grip the same chain to reach the summit.

When a speeding GMC truck crashed through a bridge fence and plunged upside down into Utah's Jordan River in 2014, Leo Montoya Jr. was the first person to jump in - then shouted at frozen bystanders until more than a dozen strangers waded in beside him. Together they physically flipped the submerged vehicle upright, held one boy's head above water, and got all three trapped teenagers out alive.

When a car rolled over Bridgette Ponson and her two toddlers in the Layton Christian Academy parking lot in December 2023, roughly 20 high school students rushed out and physically lifted the vehicle - freeing all three before EMS arrived. Senior Airman Dominique Childress, who happened to be at the school picking up his own children, pulled the mother and 2-year-old Archer to safety. The children were released from hospital without broken bones. The students were later honored by the Utah Jazz.

Jhonatan Gonzalez was hiking the Narrows at Zion National Park with his family - kids as young as 1 - when the calm river suddenly turned waist-deep and raging, choked with logs and debris. He and his brothers planted themselves in the current and formed a human chain. Strangers on the bank grabbed on. Dozens of hikers, including toddlers, passed hand-to-hand to safety. Everyone made it out.