44 Interesting Facts About Utah - 

• Utah became a state on January 4, 1896 – the 45th state to join the union. 
• Utah, the "Beehive State", has 29 counties. 
• Utah gets its name from the Native American tribe, Ute.  
• The state of Utah has an interesting geography. It features three distinct land forms. These include the Rocky Mountains, the Colorado Plateau and the Basin and Ridge Region. It also has some distinguished geographical features such as an enormous salt water lake and salt flats. 
• It is Utah's unique geographical features that make it of great interest to film and documentary makers. It was found to offer the perfect backdrop to shoot Westerns such as The Lone Ranger and Stagecoach. Other films including the Planet of the Apes and Arabian Nights were shot here. 
• Newspaper rock – the symbols etched in sandstone act as a 2,000 year old newspaper of native cultures. 
• here are over 2,000 naturally formed arches at the Arches National Park in Utah.  
• Utah is home to one of the oldest living organisms in the world. Located in the Fishlake National Forest, the trembling giant is a grove of Aspen trees.  
• The Great Salt Lake is the largest of its kind in the Western world. The water in the lake has nine times more salt than that found in oceans.  
• The 30,000 acres of the Bonneville Salt Flats offer an incredible sight. The smooth and densely packed salt terrain makes this area of great interest to speed racers. Several land speed records have been set at Bonneville Salt Flats.   
• The largest raptor to be unearthed in the world was in Utah. The 23-foot-long predatory dinosaur was named Utahraptor.  
• Utah is home to the largest independent film festival in the country, the Sundance Film Festival. In fact, it was originally known as the Utah Film Festival. 
• Kraft Foods, the makers of Jell-O, revealed that the residents of Utah consume more Jell-O than any other state in the country.  
• The Kentucky Fried Chicken was first sold in Utah, and not in Kentucky.  
• The nation's first transcontinental rail road was completed in Utah. The Golden Spike National Memorial Site at Promontory commemorates the event. The project took seven years to complete in 1869, and stretched from Sacramento to Omaha.  
• The first departmental store in the country was established in Utah. The Zion Cooperative Mercantile Store was established in 1868, and was successfully run until 1999, when the store was bought over by Macy's. 
• 20. The Bingham Canyon Mine is considered to be the biggest man-made pit in the world. For over a century, miners have been at work here. Every day the pit gets bigger as the mining company continues to take out about 250,000 tons of rock from it.  
• Utah is the only state whose capital is three words long. Salt Lake City was originally named Great Salt Lake City. Great was dropped from the name in 1868. 
• Utah is one of the Four Corners states. It meets up with Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico at a single point..   
• Rainbow Bridge (290 feet/88 meters tall and 270 feet/83 meters across), by Lake Powell, is the world's largest natural bridge. It is considered sacred by Navajo culture. 
• In 1896, Martha Hughes Cannon was elected the first woman senator. Interestingly, one of her opponents was her husband. She received 10,288 votes while her husband only received 8,054 votes. 
• Kings Peak (13,534 feet) in the Uinta Mountains is Utah's highest peak. The state has five national parks. It is interesting to note that every Utah County has some portion of national forest land.[3] 
• Salt Lake City hosted the opening ceremony for the Winter Olympics, 2002. Americans won a total of 34 medals in the event.  
• The Subway is a narrow slot canyon located upstream in the canyon formed by the Left Fork of North Creek in Zion National Park, Utah. In the early afternoon, sunlight bounces off a sandstone cliff wall opposite the entrance to the subway, causing the warm glow inside the tunnel. Image credit – Sascha Wenninger  
• Utah is a leader in the defense system and aerospace technology because of its vast expanses of desert. 

SOURCE: https://thefactfile.org/utah-facts/