This Is The Place Heritage Park. The Natural History Museum of Utah. Temple Square. Three sites. One complete narrative. And one Salt Lake City bus tour that connects them all in a single day.
The Three Places That Tell
Utah’s Full Story
This Is The Place Heritage Park. The Natural History Museum of Utah. Temple Square. Three sites. One complete narrative. And one bus that connects them all in a single day.
Most visitors to Salt Lake City arrive with one destination in mind: Temple Square. And with the Salt Lake Temple’s Grand Reopening scheduled for April 2027, that pull will be stronger than ever — an estimated eight million visitors expected in the first year alone. But here’s what the itinerary planners miss: Temple Square, extraordinary as it is, tells only the final chapter of a story that begins miles away, up in the foothills east of downtown, at a monument most tourists never see.
To truly understand Salt Lake City — to feel the weight of what its pioneers achieved, and to appreciate why the temple reopening is such a monumental event — you need to visit three places. They are not particularly far from each other. In fact, our Salt Lake City bus tour connects all three in a single day. But together, they tell the complete arc of Utah’s story: from the ancient land the pioneers found, to the moment they arrived, to the legacy they left behind.
“This is the right place. Drive on.”— Brigham Young, Emigration Canyon, July 24, 1847
Place 1 This Is The Place Heritage Park
The story begins at the mouth of Emigration Canyon. On July 24, 1847, Brigham Young — weak with mountain fever, riding in a wagon — was lifted up to look out over the Salt Lake Valley for the first time. “This is the right place,” he reportedly said. “Drive on.” In that moment, the city that would become Salt Lake City was chosen.
Today, the monument that stands at that spot is massive and worth seeing — but it’s the Pioneer Village behind it that stops most visitors in their tracks. Dozens of original and reconstructed buildings from the pioneer era create a living museum you can walk through, with costumed interpreters, period demonstrations, and the genuine artifacts of a community building civilization from scratch.
What most visitors feel here — and what most travel guides miss — is the sheer improbability of it all. These were people who had crossed 1,300 miles of unmapped wilderness in covered wagons, driven from their homes, arriving in this high desert valley with almost nothing. What they built in the following decades — including a temple that took 40 years to construct — is almost incomprehensible when you stand here and look out at the same valley they first saw.
Why it matters for your visit: If you visit Temple Square without coming here first, you’re reading the final chapter of a book without the beginning. This Is The Place is where the story starts.
Place 2 Natural History Museum of Utah
The Natural History Museum of Utah is, by any measure, one of the finest natural history museums in the United States. Its Rio Tinto Center building — perched on the hillside above the University of Utah campus — is itself an architectural achievement worth experiencing. Opened in 2011, it sits like a geological formation emerging from the Wasatch foothills.
Inside, the museum tells the story of Utah from its deepest past forward: ancient inland seas, one of the world’s most spectacular dinosaur collections (Utah has produced more significant dinosaur finds than almost anywhere on earth), the cultures of indigenous peoples who called this land home for thousands of years, and the geology that makes Utah’s landscape one of the most dramatic on the planet.
For visitors making their way through Salt Lake City’s heritage circuit, the Natural History Museum provides essential context. The pioneers who arrived in 1847 found a land shaped over millions of years — a former lakebed, surrounded by mountains rich in minerals and inhabited by Native American communities with deep, complex histories. Understanding that context makes the pioneer story, and Temple Square at its center, far more resonant.
Don’t miss: The “Past Worlds” permanent gallery with its extraordinary dinosaur skeletons, and the “First Peoples” gallery chronicling Utah’s indigenous heritage — the people who were here long before the first pioneer wagon crested Emigration Canyon.
Place 3 Temple Square
Now the story’s final chapter comes into focus. The Salt Lake Temple — the most iconic building in Salt Lake City, with its six granite spires visible from across the valley — took forty years to build, from 1853 to 1893. That’s forty years of quarrying granite from the Wasatch Mountains, hauling it by oxen and later by rail, cutting and fitting each stone by hand, while the young city around it was simultaneously building everything else a civilization requires.
The pioneer generation who laid the cornerstone in 1853 knew they would not live to see it finished. They built it anyway. That act of multigenerational commitment — building something you know will outlast you — is perhaps the most moving fact about the entire site, and it lands with full force when you’ve already stood at This Is The Place and tried to imagine what those pioneers saw when they first looked out at this valley.
Today, while the temple undergoes renovation toward its Grand Reopening in April 2027, the surrounding block is alive with history. The Tabernacle — with its spectacular oval dome and famous pipe organ — is open for tours and hosts the world-famous Tabernacle Choir broadcasts. The Church History Museum offers world-class pioneer history exhibits, all free. The FamilySearch Library houses billions of genealogical records from over 100 countries.
When the temple itself reopens in April 2027, it will mark the completion of a restoration that has made the building safer and more beautiful than at any point in its history. The reopening is expected to draw visitors from across the globe. Our bus connects you to every piece of the story that precedes it — so that when you arrive at Temple Square, you arrive with the full context of what you’re seeing.
One Bus. The Complete Story.
This Is The Place Heritage Park, the Natural History Museum of Utah, and Temple Square — all on a single route, all in a single day. The pioneer-to-present journey that built Salt Lake City, told in the places where it happened.
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