Maybe Fillmore should be the state's capital

In John Gunther's day, people in the American Southwest didn't seem to realize they were standing in the path of a migration wave that would grow cities like junipers out of the desert. In contrast, the folks in St. George today seem to be bracing for what they know will come.

The question is whether the rest of the state is ready.

Gunther was an author who wrote several popular books in the early decades of the 20th century, giving inside looks into various aspects of American life. At the end of World War II, he set out on a trip around the United States, visiting virtually every state and reporting on life, customs, politics and trends in each. He spent a lot of time, for instance, in Phoenix. It was, he said, the cleanest city he had visited in America.

But he gave no indication that the clean city, which then had a population of about 60,000, was about to explode to about 500,000 by 1960 and to 1.4 million, and still growing, in 2000.

By contrast, people in St. George today seem to know what is coming. And last week the Utah State Data Center put it into sharper focus.

It published projections that by 2050 the population of the city of St. George, not counting its suburbs, will be 317,818 — which would make it the largest city in the state. By comparison, it is 65,968 today.

Salt Lake City's population is projected to reach 225,066 in 2050. But that seems a little far-fetched, given that the city has been stagnant for decades. The most recent Census estimates put it at only 182,046, which is virtually identical to what it was in 1950.

Whenever numbers start flying through the air, a little context is in order. And so I must point out that Salt Lake City is today about one-tenth of a Wasatch Front area (Utah, Salt Lake, Weber and Davis counties) that contains about 1.9 million people. By 2050, that area is projected to contain about 3.6 million people, whereas Washington County is projected to house only 607,334. The northern metropolitan region still will be Utah's largest and most powerful.

But the biggest single city in the state by far will be St. George. To be fair, some folks down there don't believe the projections. They think the city will grow much faster much sooner.