YEARS OF DECISION AND GROWTH, 1975-1995
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70,000 people over Labor Day weekend in 1993. Residents turned the main square in town into a miniature Swiss village with craft shops and food booths. Performers entertained the crowds from a small stage. Additional concerts and events occurred in the WPA town budding. Parades marched down Main Street. While sandwiches were no longer free, there were snacks ranging from traditional Swiss bratwurst to "Swiss tacos." Swiss Days combined the energy of the local Mormon church and the Midway Boosters Club.35
State Parks Recreation includes the three state parks: Wasatch Mountain, Deer Creek, and Jordanelle. More than 650,000 people visit Deer Creek each year where they do sightseeing, picnicking, swimming, fishing, and boating. The state also plans a trad system that wdl connect the state parks from Echo Junction in Summit County through Wasatch County.36
Reclamation—Strawberry When the Bureau of Reclamation budt Strawberry Reservoir in the 1920s it expected the major use to be the storage of water for southern Utah County. In 1926 the Strawberry Water Users Association took over the management of the reservoir and began developing its recreational possibilities. With no established guidelines, the first fishing villages sprang up at random along the reservoir's shores. By the late 1970s old house traders, buses, cabins, and boats dotted the landscape in an unsightly clutter. Uncontrolled development along the reservoir shores threatened to pollute the reservoir. According to the Wasatch Wave: "The area around the reservoir is a study in contrasts. Sections of immaculate green lawns sit next to parched patches of sagebrush and June grass. Battered buses, their windows long since demolished, are parked next to newlypainted cabins. Pdes of trash and rubble assault the eye where comfortable cottages once stood." Sanitation facilities were even worse. "Sanitation practices were eclectic. They would dig pit latrines, and when they were filled up, they would move them." Robert Mathis compared the camps to ones in the Grapes of Wrath, explaining the users grew up in that era. And although they were a health hazard,
