“Park City, Utah, Visitors’ Center Emphasizes Family,” Ensign, Apr. 2000, 78
Park City, Utah, Visitors’ Center Emphasizes Family
Climbing your family tree just became easier for visitors to Park City, Utah, where the Church opened its first visitors’ center with a family history focus.
Located in a quaint three-story building designed to blend in with other historic storefronts in this old mining town turned ski community, the Family Tree Center at Park City is directed by local residents Verdis and Bonnie Norton. Brother Norton says the center has two purposes: first, to emphasize the importance of families as basic units of society and of the Church, and, second, to leave a favorable impression of the Church with visitors.
The center will be staffed with full-time sister missionaries from Temple Square in Salt Lake City and with local couples from Park City wards.
Early response to the center has been positive. Because Park City, a town of 16,000 residents located about 25 miles east of Salt Lake City, is scheduled to host many events of the 2002 Winter Olympics, as many as 75,000 people could visit the center during that year.
The first thing visitors see as they enter the 20-by-50-foot main-floor room is a huge tree growing up from the basement through a hole in the floor, its branches spreading out until they nearly touch the ceiling and the walls. Upon closer examination, visitors notice old photographs of faces peering out from various places amid the rough tree bark. A painting of the Savior and a backlit picture of the Salt Lake Temple are prominently displayed.
Around the room, interactive video displays each have their own ceiling speaker cone in the ceiling so that visitors hear only the audio for the display they are viewing. Favorites include hands-on displays for children and a station that replays the Church’s “Homefront” television spots.
The basement room features several FamilySearch• computer stations and a wall-sized mural of a representative pedigree chart complete with pictures of forebears.
The Family Tree Center has a prominent place on Main Street in Park City, a historic mining town turned ski resort community. (Photo by Paul Barker, Deseret News.)