Central Utah, from The Local.

Central Utah is a corridor, not a bowl. Interstate 15 runs down the west side through Nephi and Fillmore, the way almost everyone arrives from the Wasatch Front. Near Cove Fort, Interstate 70 branches east and climbs into the Sevier Valley past Richfield and Salina before crossing a long empty stretch toward Green River. Behind the San Pitch Mountains, out of sight of both freeways, US-89 threads the Sanpete Valley through Mount Pleasant, Ephraim, Manti and Gunnison, the old pioneer spine. Four valleys, four sub corridors, one region.

The Wasatch Plateau walls the whole east side, and its ridge road, Skyline Drive, runs about 90 miles along the top at nearly 10,000 feet. Every Sanpete canyon climbs to it. The Sevier River threads much of the valley floor from south to north, the West Desert opens flat and dry west of Delta toward Great Basin National Park, and Mount Nebo, the highest peak in the Wasatch Range at 11,928 feet, stands over Nephi at the north gate. About 75,000 people live across the four counties, most of them in farm towns and college towns rather than suburbs.

Like the regions before it, Central Utah reads region first on The Local, because the things that define life here belong to no single town: Skyline Drive and the plateau, the Scandinavian Main Streets, Fish Lake and the high lakes, the West Desert and its dunes, the ancient rock art off I-70, the turkey and hay country, and the warm water reservoir off I-15. Each gets one page below, written once, and each town's own guide routes to them. Richfield, the Sevier County seat, sits in the middle as the service hub the rest of the corridor drives to for a hospital, a big store, or a government office.

Interstate 15 is the front door. It runs down the west side of the region through Nephi and Fillmore, and Nephi sits about an hour south of Provo, so most people arriving from the Wasatch Front reach Central Utah on I-15. Near Cove Fort, at the Millard and Beaver county line, Interstate 70 branches east and climbs into the Sevier Valley, running past Richfield and Salina. East of Salina the freeway crosses a famously empty stretch toward Green River, the longest run of Interstate in the country without services, so Salina is the last full stop for many miles and drivers top off the tank there.

US-89 is the old spine and the third road that matters. It runs up the Sanpete Valley behind the San Pitch Mountains, out of sight of both freeways, linking Mount Pleasant, Ephraim, Manti and Gunnison before dropping into the Sevier Valley near Salina and continuing south through Richfield and Monroe. Getting from the I-15 side to the Sanpete side means crossing a mountain gap, and the plateau to the east has only the seasonal Skyline Drive over the top, so the valleys stay a little separate even now. There is no passenger rail anywhere in Central Utah, and no commercial airport; the nearest big airport is Salt Lake City.

What that adds up to is a region where distance is the honest asterisk. Richfield is the service hub because it is central: a hospital, the big stores, and the government offices that three or four counties share are here, and everything else is a drive. Winter adds its own note, since I-70 and the mountain passes can close or slow in a storm and the empty stretches leave little margin. For a major medical center, a major airport, or the biggest shopping, the corridor still looks north to Provo and Salt Lake or, from the south end, toward Cedar City and St. George.