Most Beautiful Historic Residential Neighborhood in Utah (Provo, Ogden: ski resort, 2011)

[tg9999]

We are fortunate enough to be retiring in our early 50's in 2011.

Question: What is the most beautiful historic residential neigborhood in Utah?
We are only interested in 2 criteria:
1) a high concentration of beautiful, historic homes;
2) decent weather for most of the year.

(Assume emloyment , housing costs, and all other factors irrelevant.) Feel free to post any photos if you have them.
Thanks in advance.

[markg91359]

We are fortunate enough to be retiring in our early 50's in 2011.

Question: What is the most beautiful historic residential neigborhood in Utah?
We are only interested in 2 criteria:
1) a high concentration of beautiful, historic homes;
2) decent weather for most of the year.

(Assume emloyment , housing costs, and all other factors irrelevant.) Feel free to post any photos if you have them.
Thanks in advance.

.................................................. ..................................................

Not sure what you mean by "decent weather". If you mean not "ice cold" like the Dakotas, Montana, or Minnesota than Salt Lake is probably fine. We get snow during the winter, but not as bad as those places. On the other hand, if you want to avoid most of the snow you are going to have to move down south to St. George.

In Salt Lake, the area along South Temple Avenue is full of beautiful old historic homes. These homes include the Governor's Mansion and homes of other prominent Utahns who lived 50 to 100 years ago. Utah State History is a site you might take a look at for contacts and other information.

[ChrisC]

It really depends on what 'flavor' and size of city/town you want to live in. Many towns have an historical district. In SLC, you have the east side of downtown and avenues (and other pockets), in Provo there is the downtown/east Center Street area. Ogden has some nice old homes. If you are into smaller towns, there are places like Mount Pleasant where nearly the entire downtown is on the national historic register. There are plenty of smaller former mining towns with some historic homes/areas.

As for the weather. Well, what's decent? To varying degrees, all of Utah has cold, snowy winters. The only exception is extreme southwestern Utah (St. George, etc), but the summers are hotter than sin there too. Typically in the rest of the state, the winter alternates with snowstorms (sometimes heavy) and clear days with cold temps. Again, it varies, but lows are teens to twenties at night typically and twenties and thirties during the day. At times there is a short spell of slightly higher or lower temps. Snow tends to be on the ground for most of the winter, usually. On the benches, you will certainly get more snow. And of course, in the mountain valley towns, even more snow. Roads can be miserable at times, but the road crews do an all right job, typically.

I'd say, in general, most of Utah tends to have fairly cold, snowy winters, and hot, dry summers... and short springs and autumns in between. To get a general idea, find the elevation of the valley you are considering. The higher it is, the more snow and colder it will be. Utah Valley (Provo) is at around 4500 ft. Winter can be nasty at times with sometimes significant snow. Kamas is at around 6500 ft and winters ARE cold and there IS significant snow. Monticello is at 7000 ft, and even though they are in extreme southern Utah, they get a lot of snow and it's quite cold there (in fact there used to be a ski resort near Monticello). On the other hand, if you go to Marysvale or Tropic, even though you get cold winters, they are not as bad and there is much less snow accumulation. So... as you can see, it's a mixed bag.

[Chango]

I would consider a small town. It's not Utah but southern Idaho around the Bear lake area still has it's turn of the century farming town feel. Logan and the small towns in Cache valley are nice and quite historic too.

Off the top of my head there are several historic districts along the Wasatch front in Ogden, Kaysville, Farmington, Bountiful, West Bountiful, SLC, Midvale, Draper, American fork, Provo and probably in other cities too. They would be good places to start looking and all have really beautiful, one of a kind historic houses.

I live in a National Register listed historic home in South Davis County myself. I'm not too fond of the cookie-cutter vinyl surroundings that replaced the fields, farms and other old houses around my own, but I love living in an old house.

As far as weather goes... if you want perfect weather, don't live in Utah. It seems like it's always either too hot or too cold wherever you are in the state.

[yellowsnow]

To me, that's easy. The Avenues. It's an area in SLC a little N of downtown. Very old, beautiful homes that are well maintained. It's elevated and a lot of the homes would have good views too. But it's not cheap.

[osugirl2]

I love the old victorian homes in Ogden. There are so many rennovations going on currently, and they just look gorgeous! I love the sidewalks with the big, old trees lining them.

[Lamborgotti]

Originally Posted by osugirl2

I love the old victorian homes in Ogden. There are so many rennovations going on currently, and they just look gorgeous! I love the sidewalks with the big, old trees lining them.

Yeah, Ogden really is nice. There's a great set of photos here.

I've actually never been there to check it out, my favorite is still Harvard-Yale.

[SouthernBelleInUtah]

Originally Posted by Lamborgotti

Yeah, Ogden really is nice. There's a great set of photos here.

I've actually never been there to check it out, my favorite is still Harvard-Yale.

WOW! Gorgeous homes and photos. I can see a trip to Ogden in my future. Thanks for the link.

[osugirl2]

Hey, there's a picture of my townhome in there!! Now you all know why I'm so happy with our new place

[MrAnderson]

So what kind of city / town are you looking for? Bigger city or smaller town, etc? St. George has become a retirement mecca of sorts. It's basically a desert, but a beautiful one - extremely hot and dry summers, and very comfortable springs, falls, and winters.

Because I like to rep Logan, Utah I'll post a few from the historic district there that runs around the Center Street area close to downtown.