Deer Valley Resort on Monday attached a new name to the planned expansion off U.S. 40, effectively retiring a moniker that harkened back to the Park City area’s silver-mining heritage.
The name is Deer Valley East Village and it refers to the base village that will be developed there as well as the portal to skiing. It is a nod to the eastern locale of the Wasatch County land.
The land had been known as Mayflower for decades. The Mayflower moniker alluded to a historic mine. Park City was founded in the 19th century as a silver-mining camp and mining drove the economy until the middle of the 20thcentury. There are numerous places and streets nowadays named after locations that were important in the mining days.
The Deer Valley East Village name joins the widely used Silver Lake Village moniker for the mid-mountain development at the resort. The Snow Park base, meanwhile, is sometimes called Snow Park Village. A major development is planned at the Snow Park base, with some references to the project using the word “Village” as part of the name.
There have been efforts to rebrand places over the years in the Park City area with varying degrees of success. City Hall has largely removed the Osguthorpe name from the iconic white barn and open space along the S.R. 224 entryway, replacing it with the historic name of McPolin. The municipal government, though, has not been as successful to date as it attempts to move away from the name of the waterway Poison Creek with a rebranding to Empire Creek.
Park City Mountain, meanwhile, has largely succeeded in recent years in dropping the word “Resort” from the end of the name, as well as moving away from the abbreviated “PCMR” that was widely used in referring to the resort, particularly locally, starting in the 1990s.
Deer Valley revealed the name of the expansion in the months after the announcement of an agreement that brought the terrain into the resort. The ground prior to the agreement was expected to be developed as a standalone resort next to Deer Valley. The standalone resort had been referred to as Mayflower Mountain Resort.
Deer Valley owner Alterra Mountain Company and Extell Development Company, the developer of the base that will be at Deer Valley East Village, negotiated a long-term operations agreement that folded the terrain into Deer Valley. The land will boost Deer Valley’s terrain by 3,700 acres and bring the total acreage at the resort to 5,726. The first lifts and trails at Deer Valley East Village are expected to open as early as the 2025-2026 ski season. There will also be skier services, retailers and dining at Deer Valley East Village.
The development benefitted with the Military Installation Development Authority involved. The authority is a state economic development entity designed to advance projects with a military component. There will be a hotel developed within the project for the benefit of military members.