Tbf many mountains have cascades

SLC is the only place where decent people live in Utah though. They even piloted some very good housing-first policies that simplified dealing with people not having housing by... just giving them housing.

Everywhere else in Utah and most surrounding states is the absolute worst.

So you're saying I gotta visit Bryce Canyon sooner than later.

I thought the C in CIA stood for Catholic 🤔

Field agents versus Langley suits IIRC

Isn't there a big hoax about prehistoric Utah giants?

• Many of the "most beautiful" places are the most settler, they weren't even states a little over 100 years ago. Their economic base and political background was built on "free" (stolen) land and genocide. Their "culture" is built on myths and truths around independence, basically having like 10 neighbors within walking distance at best.
• There actually were a lot of rural conservationists, mostly for recreational purposes. Rural entertainment is going outside. Hunting, fishing, sports, hiking, ATVs, snow stuff. After genocide there was plenty of stolen land for these things. The folks were never coherent but they liked their access to public land. Many (most?) rural states were defined via incoherent politics, progressive in some ways, reactionary in others. Some had the earliest feminist policies, for example, even while having some of the greatest violence against women.
• Reactionaries have congealed around mass media false consciousness, it has risen to the forefront and is now more disciplined. And the children of those conservationists have increasingly left rural areas for economic reasons. What's left behind is a bunch of small towns that could be replaced by a hospice care center but the nearest hospital is an hour away. Those intransigent survivors are biased towards those who faced the least social violence. Proximity to capital. White. In positions of influence over others. Land owners. They love to chitchat with their 10 neighbors about the worst things you've seen on social media or TV.

If doing an analysis it is useful to remember that the outdoorsy conservationist types do still exist at least on paper. They're just outweighed by the aforementioned reactionaries.

There have been some recent course changes to this as well, but it's mostly an influx of shitlibs from cities, people who buy up land and work remotely or are petty bourgeois. They are basically gentrifiers and care more about NIMBY than conservation.

they think living outside of society in a superficial way will make their gripes with it go away, but no one can ever truly be outside society

I've been to a few beautiful rural communities in the US that are more progressive leaning, I think most of the actual serious leftists that move to the country just don't make any noise politically because they are more serious and doing real homesteading and farm work or whatever and don't want to be targeted, and we just hear mostly about the neo-nazis etc because they don't fear the state as much and all they do is go to school board meetings and town halls and yell about woke ideologies.