Springville, [South] Utah Valley

Springville has always lived in an in-between space, halfway between the Fiesta Days Rodeo and the tree streets of Provo.

Image credit: Beck Seamons

Springville, UT, 84663: A pioneer community home to the Red Devils, a golf course enjoyed by legends of the sport—notably Billy Casper and Ricky Fowler—and a world-class collection of Soviet realist art, nestled between Hobble Creek Canyon and the eastern marshes of Utah Lake. To describe Springville requires an eclectic local vocabulary, one formed by 125 years of life between the civilized foothills of Provo and the Footloose-esque obscurity of Payson and Santaquin. Growing up in Springville is like growing up as a middle child. I would know; I did both.

Growing up in foothill suburbia, my brothers and I enjoyed playing Wii Sports and city-league soccer, getting fifty-cent tacos from the Del Taco by the freeway exit, and playing in the field behind our 1/3 acre of backyard. It felt like the most normal thing in the world, likely because it was. When it came time to send us to elementary school, however, things started to change. Growing up on the east side of the city, I thought it was odd that our parents drove us across town to Westside Elementary every day. Apparently, they were impressed with the school’s administration, so they loaded us every morning into our red Sienna minivan and hauled us along past the railroad tracks, the llamas, and Jaker’s pumpkin patch to go to school. Education has always come first for them (both work at BYU and cared seriously about our school environments). Two lives emerged, my Westside life and my east side life. The west side, with its new, cookie-cutter neighborhoods and weathered trailer parks, was a different world than the old-world east side. Title I (a federal funding designation for schools in low-income communities) was a boon to the school until it lost the funding during my sixth-grade year.

Springville is torn between two worlds, the old world and the new. All of this comes to a point in the Utah-famous Springville Art Museum, most well-known for its yearly Spring Salon, which hosts artwork from the best contemporary artists in the Intermountain West. My favorite memory from the art museum comes from my brother’s wedding reception on the second floor. There was something odd about celebrating a marriage under the red stars so prominent in Soviet propaganda artwork of the mid-twentieth century. Apparently, Vern Swanson, an early director of the museum who had a fondness for the stark realism and technological utopianism of Soviet art brought an inordinate amount of it to south Utah Valley. I’ve never been married, but I suppose that the situation carries a canny parallel to the institutions of marriage and community living. Spouse, curator, and pioneer are similar roles, all bringing disparate elements together. I’m still not sold on the particular blend of proletariat will and cowboy frontier, but the museum’s marriage of the two has lasted this long, so it must be doing something right. 

The funniest story I’ve heard about the museum comes from Springville High School’s 2018 prom, also hosted on the second floor. Under red stars and iron fists, western landscapes, and Minerva Teichert religious scenes, four hundred Red Devils stomped to the “Cha Cha Slide” and moshed to “Sweet Caroline” until the Depression-era wood floor sagged and swayed right along with them. Prom was cut short that year in favor of the integrity of the historic Spanish Revival structure, but the memories live on. 

Springville likely appears asynchronous to the uninitiated, but to me, it all goes together like a Beto’s burrito and a Sonic limeade—perfectly. In my home ward on the east bench, there are a number of historic family names. These are pioneer families, those whose ancestors logged the trees of Hobble Creek Canyon in the summers and run the city council to this day. They form the foundation of Springville’s old world. Never a part of the comparatively bustling scene of Provo and Orem, they have hung together through cold winters, recessions, and the construction of I-15, all the while maintaining a sense of community and rurality unique to south Utah Valley (Springville, Mapleton, Spanish Fork, and Payson). From 1930s illicit gambling at the horse racetrack (which became the Arts Park and is currently being bulldozed as the construction site of the new high school) to the inexplicable high school mascot (“On you devils, on you devils / Fight ’em for your fame / Fight devils fight, and you will win this game! Hey!”), Springville has always lived in an in-between space, halfway between the Fiesta Days Rodeo and the tree streets of Provo. 

As a middle child educated halfway between old world and new, raised as a newcomer to a ward community made up of Springville’s old guard, I’ve grown to appreciate the liminality of it all. Going to high school at a charter school in Lindon, the epitome of north Utah County establishment, did nothing to ease the disorientation. A third world opened up, one of BYU professors’ kids and experimental education programs like “Winterim,” a whole month out of normal classes dedicated to alternative and unique topics of study like ancient Greek and Wasatch ski history. I’d always loved school, but after graduation, I realized how much I was a child of my parents.

They moved to Springville in 2003, at a time of suburban development on the benches. The field behind our house is a remnant of the grazing land which covered the slopes leading up to Camelback and Powerhouse Mountains. Spring Creek had been piped and diverted long before. They came because of the reasonable property prices and proximity to Provo, and they’ve stayed for the same reasons. We came to Springville towards the beginning of the boom, but in the last five years, the community has begun to expand rapidly, especially on the west side towards the freeway. Unlike other expanding communities on the Wasatch front, Springville seems to have held on to the independent charm that I’ve come to love. It’s something about not getting tied down to one identity or defining characteristic. 

As a middle child raised in the in-between, I love Springville. I love Johnson Tire and Brookside soda. I relish the smell of the freshly mowed fairway and the splendor of autumn leaves up the canyon. Springville feels like home, halfway between Provo and Spanish Fork, the establishment and the south valley. As the middle child of Utah Valley, Springville is a place unto itself. There is value in liminal spaces, in spots that subtly and unconsciously bridge the gap between the expected and the novel, the old-world and the new. Springville and communities like it are the most organic of places, defining what it means to occupy space of one’s own. Springville is the “Art City” because it has a great art museum, not because of any pretensions to being a thriving artistic mecca. Living in Art City seems to be much more important than being from an “art city” to me. 

I’m moving to Provo in the fall, but I’m happy to be from Springville. I may not have gone to Springville High, but I’m proud to be a Red Devil. Growing up here, as a middle child, I’ve found that the position comes with a relative freedom from expectation. Springville is a place like that. So when you come to visit, come without any expectations except for Soviet art and a good round of golf.