Price is Right: Southern Utah's Hometown Charm

February 2, 2017

Holly Yocum’s coal town grows up.

Holly Yocom, associate director of the Salt Lake County Community Services Department, says she was on a road trip once with Jamie Redford, director and son-of-Robert, when he asked if they could grab some food in her hometown of Price. The reason for the pit stop was to revisit a diner where he and his parents used to stop for milkshakes on long-ago family trips as the Redfords made their way to Moab. Yocom knew exactly the place Jamie wanted to go— Sherald’s Drive-In Frosty Freeze, an iconic old-school eatery with the best shakes in town and car hops to take your order. “It’s fun to know that Price has touched all kinds of people,” Yocom says.

That’s what Price is to most Utahns—a stop on the way to somewhere else—but the town’s proximity to national parks and monuments is making the historic coal community an adventure basecamp. “That’s the gem of being in Price,” says Yocom. “You’re centrally located to so many things—there’s the San Rafael Swell, Moab, Huntington Lake—all there. I love being outdoors and I love that in Price, within minutes, you can be in these beautiful places that are still undiscovered by so many people.”

But Price is more than its natural setting. “It’s really rich with culture,” says Yocom. “Price is an amazing community that supports the arts. And people get involved in everything that happens, whether it’s a local sporting event or an arts festival.”

Thanks to Price’s Greek population (who arrived—much as they did in northern Utah—as miners) the city hosts a Greek Festival that Yocom puts on her favorite-things-in-Price list. “You could go to any Greek festival in the world, and I would say that it rivals that.”

Price has underground wealth beyond coal. It’s dinosaur country. Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum focuses on the area’s geological history. The Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur Quarry, with the world’s highest fossil concentration, is 30 miles south.