Utah's loneliest job?

LAKESIDE — Todd Stimpson really should go to sleep earlier.

The bed has an exquisite pull at 2:30 a.m. "Stay," it seems to say as he pulls the covers back, cursing himself for hitting the sack at 10:30 p.m. Leesa, Stimpson's wife of 10 years, barely notices when half of their bed is emptied of her husband's form. A brief kiss 30 minutes later is her only alert that her husband is leaving.

He'll be back in just over two days.

A tanned Stimpson pulls his Toyota Tacoma to the street, leaving behind the sweet, earthy scent of Nibley farmland south of Logan for the briny air of the Great Salt Lake. It will be hours before he gets to his home away from home on the lake's west side, where he works in solitude for days at a time at one of the most remote locations in the state.

Few people know that Stimpson's job exists, and fewer still have seen the place that amounts to his corner cubicle — a desolate chunk of Utah in the middle of nowhere — but Stimpson's got a job as important as any farmer in the circle of life. He helps produce a much sought-after fertilizer used to grow fruit and berry crops and to keep lawns healthy and green.

On this cool July morning outside of Stimpson's Nibley home, the mountains of Cache Valley are charcoal against the purple sky. The brilliant full moon rakes across the landscape. It will still be hours before the faintest hint of dawn arrives in the east.

This early, the roads between home and the lakeshore at Great Salt Lake Minerals' production plant west of Ogden — where Stimpson switches his gear to a company truck — are nearly empty.

His checklist: three spare tires, food to get him through the trip, engine parts, tools and a full gas tank. He needs to get it now, because he's not going to see another human for a couple of days.

Stimpson and co-worker Brad Bryner take turns living alone in a white mobile home on the lake's west side. Neither leaves the company outpost next to thousands of acres of water until the other arrives. Their maintenance skills keep pumps running that feed thousands of acres of shallow evaporation ponds, which produce more than 400,000 tons of sulfate of potash each year.

Sulfate of potash provides the potassium that robust citrus, berry, tomato, potato and other crops crave. And it does its job without being high in chloride, like other sources of potassium.

Stimpson and Bryner work for GSL Minerals as B-plus operators, which means that the company — the largest North American producer of sulfate of potash — trusts Stimpson and one other employee to ensure operations on the west side of the Great Salt Lake function the way they should.

It could be Utah's loneliest job.

A solitary drive