A street by any other name would still lead to the Utah State Capitol
Small Lake City
By Bryant Heath
At the end of each year's Utah legislative session, I am always reminded of Fox 13 government reporter Ben Winslow's recurring quip that "all roads lead to the Capitol." Although that may be true in a figurative sense—with budgets, bills and all the bickering—in a literal sense, that is not the case.
By my count, there are 17 roads that put you in close proximity to the state's halls of power, most of which possess names that are as uninspiring as the legislators themselves. A couple of explorers get a shoutout (Columbus, Cortez and De Soto Streets) as does the adjacent Marmalade neighborhood (Apricot Avenue)—oh, and don't forget our state's generic namesake, State Street. But by the time planners landed on East Capitol Boulevard and West Capitol Street, you can tell they just flat ran out of ideas.
For more inspiring street names, you must look elsewhere in the city where a fair number of sections have been rededicated to both national heroes and noteworthy locals. Of course, there are the civil rights icons Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. (600 South) and Rosa Parks Blvd. (200 East) as well as labor leader Cesar Chavez Blvd. (500 South). Like their counterparts in most other cities, those streets are located in prime real estate downtown for maximum exposure.
A more recent addition has been Harvey Milk Blvd. (900 South) near Liberty Park, which was dedicated in 2016. That street switch garnered some national attention due to the fact that a pioneering gay leader could be commemorated in—gasp!—Utah. Locally, the renaming went mostly uncontested at the time.
Not to say there aren't some street names that have generated controversy in recent years. John Stockton Drive (300 West) and Karl Malone Drive (100 South) have recently become a bit of a lightning rod due to their off-court conduct, which has been off-putting to a swath of fans. Unfortunately, naming rights of roads seem a little more fixed than arenas, and calls for changing back the streets bordering the arena have stalled out.
But the names I get excited about are those that reflect people who made impacts in certain areas of the city. A section of Harvard Avenue outside Calvary Baptist Church in the Ballpark neighborhood was recently dedicated to the Rev. France Davis, who served as pastor there for more than 45 years. Similarly, in South Salt Lake—across from the Utah Tibetan Association—you can find Dalai Lama Way (2950 South), which was christened just a few months ago.
I guess it's not too surprising that there are so many of these referential streets here. Salt Lake City itself is named after a pretty impressive landmark, after all.
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