SNAPPED: From Park City to Moab, Salt Lake’s 2002 statewide Olympic Legacy

Utah's Olympic legacy alive and well in Moab. Photo: TownLift // Michele Roepke

MOAB, Utah — On Main Street in Moab—well, more specifically, under Main Street in Moab—the Salt Lake 2002 Olympic legacy is alive and well as evidenced by a plaque which reads ‘Gold Medal Mile.’

The Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation gave it to Moab after it was no longer needed on Park City’s Olympic Parkway, leading up to Olympic Park (UOP).

Today, the plaque sits along the mile-long Mill River Walk, which meanders throughout Moab.

In 2002, it marked the walk from where tens of thousands of cars were parked in the Kimball Jct. fields as ticket holders to the Ski Jumping, Nordic Combined, Luge, Skeleton, and Bobsleigh events.

For years, the only road to the UOP was Bear Hollow Dr. off S.R. 224. Then, as planned, one day, three employees of the USOPC’s development department (the UOP is a USOPC Training Site) arrived from Colorado Springs to map out where the new road would be. It was known that Olympic spectators would be required to walk up and back down the road. 

The three walked three different paths, and the one that was faster, shorter, but not steeper was the path that ultimately got paved into Olympic Parkway.

When those tens of thousands of spectators walked the walk, they each received a free Olympic pin commemorating their efforts.

Plaques like this and other movable objects were spread around the state of Utah to share the memories of the Olympic Games.

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