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Park City

From its gritty days as a silver-mining town and then its arrival on the resort scene during the 2002 Winter Olympics, this mountain community has inherited a vibe that is both laid-back and lively. Just 30 miles from Salt Lake City, the destination ski scene includes three mountain resorts within an eight-mile stretch of road. On historic Main Street with its charming Victorian architecture, visitors can enjoy music and art, shop for designer threads, and pick from 100 restaurants. Or you can venture out to find hiking and biking trails, spring wildflowers, or even herds of elk bugling during rut season in the fall.

Aerial view of Park City on Main Street in Park City, Utah, USA.

Photo By Wangkun Jia/Shutterstock

Overview

When’s the best time to go to Park City?

Park City is known for 350 annual inches of the “Greatest Snow on Earth,” so winter sports enthusiasts enjoy skiing and snowboarding from about mid-December through early April. The local adage, though, is “I came for the winters but stayed for the summers.” This might have something to do with the many miles of trails for mountain biking, hiking, and horseback riding, temps in the comfortable 80s with no humidity, fly-fishing in nearby blue-ribbon streams, hero golf (the ball really flies here at 6,900 feet), and live music in parks and resorts most nights of the week. June through August is prime event and festival time.

How to get around Park City

Salt Lake City International Airport is 35 minutes away via Interstate 80. Four-wheel-drive rental cars are the way to go, or grab one of many airport shuttles for around $78 round-trip. Only movie celebs during the Sundance Film Festival feel the need to take taxis from Salt Lake City to the mountains of Park City.

A free public bus system—a lasting legacy of the Olympics—runs daily, with peak service from about 6:30 a.m. till midnight, from one end of town to the other and to all resorts. Taxis are also available, but you have to call; they don’t roam the streets here.

Can’t miss things to do in Park City

The summertime Flying Ace All-Star Show at Utah Olympic Park shows off the town’s natural beauty with its gorgeous setting high in the hills—not to mention athleticism and Olympic legacy. Freestylers-in-training glide down massive ski ramps and pull tricks like quadruple-twisting, triple-flipping somersaults into a 750,000-gallon splash pool with full ski gear on. The extremely entertaining show lasts a half-hour.

Food and drink to try in Park City

Local restaurants are as delightfully diverse as the people who settled this town, with as-fancy-as-it-gets locales in Deer Valley, like Apex at Montage, to cozy and cluttered pull-up-a-stool joints like the No Name Saloon (famous for its bison burgers) on Main Street. A must-stop is the High West Distillery, the first distillery allowed in Utah since Prohibition (take a tour, then enjoy drinks and dinner). Find pretty much anything you desire in any price range, from sushi to Mexican, Italian, French, Thai, and Indian. Main Street offers the largest cluster of walking-distance eateries, but nice choices exist at each of the resort villages and in the Newpark business neighborhood. Summer brings farmers’ markets (Wednesday at Canyons, and Sunday on Main Street) and food festivals like the Park City Food & Wine Classic, and the iconic Savor the Summit, with a dining table in town that runs the length of Main Street.

Culture in Park City

Two dozen galleries in this relatively small town speak to a local devotion to art. The Park City Museum highlights local history, with an old territorial jail you can step into. Also entertaining are the Alf Engen Ski Museum and the Eccles Museum up at Utah Olympic Park, where the bobsled, luge, skeleton, and Nordic jumping events were held during the 2002 Winter Games. And all year long, Park City Institute brings renowned international acts to the state-of-the-art Eccles Performing Arts Center adjacent to the local high school.

The granddaddy of Park City festivals is, of course, Robert Redford’s Sundance Film Festival in January. Other standouts are the summer Deer Valley Music Festival—with Utah Symphony performances on the resort’s lawn nearly every Saturday in July and August, as well as chamber music performances around town—and free weekly music at the local ski resorts. And the Park City Kimball Arts Festival, which started in 1969, now hosts more than 200 artists and craftspeople (as well as musicians, food trucks, and entertainment) on Main Street every August.

Local Resources

The Park Record Newspaper
Park City Magazine
Park City Live Music Calendar
KPCW Public Radio
Ski Utah

READ BEFORE YOU GO
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Grappa
Situated at the top of the hill on Park City‘s iconic Main Street, the Italian restaurant Grappa occupies a beautiful 100-plus-year-old renovated building that over the years has been a brothel, bar, and bed-and-breakfast. The name comes from the Italian brandy distilled from the leftover grape skins, stems, and seeds from the winemaking process. And, of course, Grappa serves it! Founder and owner Bill White blends French culinary influences with regional Italian dishes to bring bold and delicious flavors to his customers. When the weather is appropriate, there are five levels of patios, complete with plants and water features for alfresco dining.
May 11, 2022 01:48 PM
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Park City Mountain Resort
Acquired by Vail Resorts in 2014 and combined with Canyons in 2015, Park City Mountain now boasts 7,300 skiable acres with 324 runs accessed by 41 lifts. That includes four gondolas and 32 chairlifts. Those lifts also provide access to eight terrain parks, including six half-pipes. There’s even a lift right from the middle of town. And the fun doesn’t end when the sun goes down, with night skiing on three runs open until 9 p.m. Child care is available, too, for babies as young as six weeks old, while two- to six-year-olds can add on the Ripperoo kids ski lesson. For experts, there’s great tree skiing and off-piste options to explore and enjoy.
May 11, 2022 01:24 PM
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Hyatt Centric Park City
At the Hyatt Centric, luxury amenities meet front-door access to 7,300 acres of ski terrain, including the 314 trails, 40 chairlifts, and six natural half-pipes that make up the Park City Mountain area of Canyons Village. For even more adventure, the hotel’s in-house activities company, Wasatch Adventure Guide, can arrange for dogsledding, fly-fishing, heli-skiing, hot-air ballooning, and even ice-climbing excursions. If you’d rather soak up some culture, there’s complimentary seasonal transport to Park City’s charming Main Street and its dozens of galleries. After a long day of exploring, guests can unwind in the resort’s heated outdoor pool, or in front of their own stone fireplace. The 120 guest rooms and apartment-style residences offer a home-away-from-home feel, with even the standard rooms featuring a partial kitchen stocked with china for four. In case you don’t feel like entertaining, the on-site Escala Provisions Company Restaurant & Bar offers après-ski fare like classic fondue as well as a dinner menu with dishes like a grass-fed beef burger with tomato jam, pork belly, and pommes frites.
April 20, 2021 04:58 PM
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Hotel Park City, Autograph Collection
Situated at the base of the Park City slopes, this Autograph Collection Hotel (part of Marriott International) exudes an old-world ski-resort vibe, with a grand lobby featuring soaring ceilings, exposed-wood beams, and a stone fireplace surrounded by leather club chairs. The same rustic elegance extends to the 100 suites, each of which comes with its own fireplace, jetted tub, and private balcony or patio for enjoying a glass of wine alongside views of the Wasatch Mountains or 18-hole Park City Golf Course. Start the day with some laps at the outdoor heated pool or hit the slopes, then experience après-ski bliss in the 10,000-square-foot spa, which includes herbal-infused steam rooms, a dry cedar sauna, and recovery treatments like a therapeutic mineral soak and reflexology foot massage. There are also two on-site restaurants—Ruth’s Chris Steak House and the more casual Bandannas Bar & Grill, where you can pair quinoa burgers with local brews.
April 20, 2021 04:58 PM
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Riverhorse on Main
Located in Park City‘s renovated Masonic Hall on historic Main Street, the Riverhorse caters to a high-end fine-dining crowd. Seth Adams, the executive chef and co-owner who drives the seasonally appropriate creative menu, has brought home prestigious awards, including a few that were firsts in the state of Utah. While the Riverhorse has a great selection of wine, it does allow patrons to bring in their own bottles for a $25 corkage fee. The restaurant is family friendly, with healthy selections on the kids’ menu. Dress is “mountain casual,” and reservations are strongly encouraged.
April 20, 2021 04:10 PM
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Washington School House Hotel
Located just off Main Street, the Washington School House Hotel eschews Park City’s typical rustic style for a pared-down, flea-market–chic aesthetic. Before being reimagined as a design-oriented inn in 2011, the 1889 building served as a schoolhouse for miners’ children and a dancehall for the local outpost of Veterans of Foreign Wars. Today, the interior is anything but traditional, from the whitewashed living room with 16-foot ceilings to the antique mirror and the white, lacquered antler chandelier. Outside, a heated pool sits on the hillside surrounded by aspens and boulders. There’s also a fire pit, fashioned from a steel Olympic torch from the 2002 Winter Games.

Each of the guestrooms and suites is unique, though all feature reclaimed wood floors, crystal chandeliers, and tall windows. An artful collection of European antiques and vintage paintings adds a bohemian vibe, while white marble bathrooms offer heated floors, walk-in showers, clawfoot tubs, and period fixtures. Guests can also look forward to plush hooded robes and top-notch toiletries from Molton Brown.
April 20, 2021 04:08 PM
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Stein Eriksen Lodge
This chalet-style lodge takes its name from legendary Norwegian skier Stein Eriksen, the 1952 Olympic giant slalom gold medalist and 1954 World Cup champion. When he agreed to help develop this ski-in, ski-out spot in the 1980s, he drew from his experiences at the best ski hotels in Europe, lending the lodge an Alpine feel. Inside, fireplaces, stone walls, and rich wood ceilings complement the mountain surroundings. Guestrooms are equally thought out, with beamed cathedral ceilings, stone fireplaces, and leather furnishings. Select rooms have jetted tubs and heated floors.
April 20, 2021 04:08 PM
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Montage Deer Valley
Fans of the Montage brand’s Laguna Beach and Beverly Hills flagships will love this mountain version, a ski-in, ski-out hotel wedged into the head of Empire Canyon. The sprawling, Craftsman-style manor debuted in 2010, solidifying Deer Valley’s standing as one of North America’s most luxurious ski resorts. Service shines, starting with the “Mountain Host,” who greets guests in the majestic lobby rotunda. Up the grand staircase, the full-service Vista Lounge acts as a communal living room, with vaulted ceilings, exposed wood beams, floor-to-ceiling windows, and leather furnishings gathered around limestone fireplaces. To further entertain guests, there’s also a museum-quality collection of Western art, including Carl Runguis panoramas, John James Audubon prints, and Frederic Remington portraits.

The hotel’s X-shaped footprint means nearly every room has small deck with mountain or valley views. Averaging around 600 square feet, large guestrooms are airy and inviting with lofted ceilings and soothing natural hues. Remote-controlled gas fireplaces are the centerpiece of each room, though the bath suite with heated limestone floors, marble vanity, rain shower, and soaking tub could occupy your entire evening.
April 20, 2021 04:07 PM
 · 
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St. Regis Deer Valley
There are two ways to arrive at this exclusive Deer Valley perch—ski in from the slopes, or hop on the Swiss-crafted funicular and climb the 250-vertical-foot ridge. The 12-acre, 181-room St. Regis is literally and figuratively in rarefied air, bringing swanky suites, signature butler service, and celebrity chef–driven dining to the high Wasatch Mountain range. Après-ski is a treat at the ski “beach,” which features loungers, an outdoor fire garden, and a menu by Jean-Georges Vongerichten. From there, guests can enjoy a slope-side dip in the steamy pool, or descend a spiral staircase into the 14,000-square-foot Remède Spa for a massage. Come dinnertime, book a window-side table at the J&G Grill.

Natural elements in the lobby and library—stone fireplace, exposed wood, leather furnishings—complement the mountain setting without devolving into log-cabin kitsch. The contemporary aesthetic continues in the spacious guestrooms and suites with dark-wood furniture, state-of-the-art electronics, toasty gas fireplaces, and massive marble bathrooms.
April 20, 2021 04:07 PM
 · 
Alex Pasquariello
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