What is the “Best?” It’s a subjective term after all. But we know it when we see it. Each year, we create an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink list to tickle your intellect, fill your belly, spark your imagination and inspire ideas for exploring the place where you live. We reflect on the talk of the town—newsmakers and civic upheavals—that inspired both cheers and jeers. We pile it all together into an always-incomplete list dubbed Best of the Beehive. Here we present the things that make our state so endearingly eccentric—because let’s face it, Utah is weird!

Best Place to See Pioneer-era Knick-Knacks
Pioneer Memorial Museum
Bottles filled with teeth, a collection of rattlesnake rattles, Victorian hair art…pioneers collected it all. They may have been known for many things: resourcefulness, resilience, iron wills and frostbite, but who knew they were as quirky as we are? The museum, operated by The Daughters of Utah Pioneers, hosts a large collection of pioneer artifacts. (Including a two-headed taxidermied lamb. No. We aren’t kidding.) 300 N. Main St., SLC dupinternational.org. Photo courtesy of Visit Utah.

Best Place to Freak Out Your Friends
Lilly E. Gray’s Grave Marker, Salt Lake Cemetery
You’ll have to hunt through 130,00 graves in the state’s largest cemetery to find it, but Lilly E. Gray, born in 1881, might have the spookiest epithet we’ve ever seen. Inscribed under her name are the words, “Victim of the Beast 666.” Say what? Some say her husband, serving time in prison when she died, had the marker made as a sick joke. If not, we seriously need to get to the bottom of this. 200 N. E Street, SLC (Plot X, Block 1, Lot 169, Grave- 4, East)

Best Place to See a Half-Submerged House
Thistle Ghost Town
For almost 80 years, this little town, created by the railroad company, gave serious Old West vibes. Thistle modernized: telephone poles and asphalt roads grew around the old bank, schoolhouse, restaurant, general store and dance hall. But in 1983, a massive mudslide damned the Provo River, swelling into a lake that overtook the little town. Its 650 residents fled, leaving a ghost town with quirky remnants, like a half-submerged home. UT highway 89, about 13 minutes up Spanish Fork Canyon. Photography by Utah Department of Cultural & Community Engagement | Marriot Library

Best Place for Whale Watching (in Utah)
Ninth & Ninth
It’s a gigantic, multicolored, breaching whale sculpture in a traffic circle (“Out of the Blue,” by Stephen Kesler). Sheesh. But if you’re the type of person who likes to duck under the police tape or run towards a house fire, post a selfie with Mr. Controversy. You’ll unleash a bevy of crisis-reactions—the rage-faced emoji might become your new best friend. Who knows, maybe the anti-whale neighbors will place a symbolic garden gnome in your yard with a sign reading: “Whales belong in the ocean.” 900 S. 1100 East, SLC. Photo by Logan Sorenson.
There’s more to love in the Beehive State!
Outdoors
Eat & Drink
Jocularity
Shopping
2025 Wasatch Faults (and Faves)
Find all of this year’s Best of the Beehive coverage, and more “Bests” from past issues. And while you’re here, subscribe and get six issues of Salt Lake magazine, your curated guide to the best of life in Utah.