How Utah Came To Own A Half-Built City In The Desert

At one time, there was a café and a beauty parlor next to Tammy Smith’s remodeling store in Coral Canyon, Utah. Today, her business, Bliss Design Center, is one of the only shops left in the retail district of this new development located 20 minutes up the highway from the city of St. George, in the southwest corner of Utah.

Over the past year and a half, the stores closed down one by one, Smith said on an impossibly bright and warm Monday last month. Customers were scarce. Wide roads sat almost empty. Many of the homes that were supposed to bring life to this slice of desert — and customers to Smith's store — are either for sale, in the process of being foreclosed upon, or simply never got built at all.

Like many Western boomburgs in the wake of the recession, Coral Canyon is struggling. Unlike others, however, big chunks of this subdivision belong to the state government.

Click Here To Read: How Utah Came To Own A Half-Built City In The Desert...