Years before he would become America’s celebrated leading man, Robert Redford made an unusual decision, by moving away from Los Angeles just as his acting career was showing promise. He decamped to an arrestingly beautiful but remote canyon in Utah, where he bought two acres of land from a sheepherder for $500.
While other aspiring actors congregated on the coasts, in New York or Hollywood, Mr. Redford, in his mid-20s, built a home so isolated that for many months of the year, deep snowpack made it inaccessible by car.
Mr. Redford, 89, died on that property on Tuesday, in the canyon north of Provo that he adored.
“He loved the beauty of the place, and it fired his creativity,” said Stephen Minton, a neonatal doctor who lives near Mr. Redford’s Utah home and was his friend for 45 years. “He wasn’t a movie star to us. He was a neighbor. He was Bob.”
Over the decades, Mr. Redford bought thousands more acres in the canyon, as well as a small ski resort that he named Sundance after his role in the classic 1969 movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” The resort hosted the first iterations of the Sundance Film Festival, which would grow into an international cinematic juggernaut.
Mr. Redford’s death put a spotlight on the far-reaching consequences of his love for his patch of land, cocooned in aspen, maple and pine forests and framed by the imposing stone peaks of 11,700-foot Mount Timpanogos.
Even at the height of his acting career, he spent much of his time in the wilds of Utah, a place that at first blush did not seem like a natural fit for him. He was a progressive in a solidly conservative state. He was a vocal environmentalist in a part of the American West that thrived on extractive industries.
In 1976, after he campaigned vigorously against a proposed coal-fired power plant in southern Utah, a crowd of local residents who were eager for the jobs that the plant would create gathered to burn a blond-wigged effigy of him. (The project was scrapped, and the area was declared a national monument by President Bill Clinton in 1996.)
Yet on Tuesday, as news of his death spread, tributes to Mr. Redford, who was born and raised in Southern California, poured forth across Utah. In a time of bitter political divisions, he was praised both by conservative politicians and by progressive environmental activists.
“Bob deserves all the good things that people say about him,” Gary Herbert, a Republican who was the governor of Utah from 2009 to 2021, said in an interview. “He really had a sincere desire to be a good steward of the land. And frankly that’s the way we should all feel.”
Mr. Redford was “our conscience” and “our favorite adopted son,” the former governor said.
In 2013, Mr. Herbert organized a black-tie gala honoring Mr. Redford. The party was billed as “A Utah Tribute to an American Icon.”
Mr. Herbert credits Mr. Redford for helping to reshape the Utah economy by showcasing outdoor recreation and the arts.
The Sundance festival and a film institute that Mr. Redford founded fostered filmmakers who went on to become some of Hollywood’s biggest names, including Steven Soderbergh, Quentin Tarantino and Darren Aronofsky. And the festival brought A-list celebrities to a state that had never been known for glamour.
“Bob had a very significant role in putting Utah on the map,” Mr. Herbert said.
Over the years, Mr. Redford was more likely to be horseback riding in the Wasatch Range than hobnobbing in Hollywood.
Dr. Minton, his neighbor, remembers riding with him for six hours in the canyon. “When I got off the horse, my legs were shaking,” Dr. Minton said. “But he said, ‘Let’s ride two more hours!’”
A number of Mr. Redford’s films were set and filmed at least partly in Utah, including “Butch Cassidy,” “The Electric Horseman” and “Jeremiah Johnson.” Beyond that, though, Mr. Redford was the rare actor who not only helped create the mystique and iconography of the rugged West, but lived it, with a love of the land that won him credibility in the state.
His environmentalism came across as “authentic,” said Julie Mack, the executive director at the Sundance Nature Alliance, an organization founded by the Redford family that focuses on local preservation efforts.
“Bob started speaking out on environmental issues way before it was popular,” said Ms. Mack who worked on land preservation for 35 years with Mr. Redford. “He was a voice that woke up a lot of people to some of the problems that we are facing.”
Ms. Mack said that she heard Mr. Redford explain on numerous occasions that his desire to conserve his beloved canyon was inspired partly by his childhood in Santa Monica, Calif., in the 1940s and 1950s, when he saw the city’s population balloon and its open space disappear.
He once told an interviewer that he bought the land in Utah to protect it from the “thundering hooves of out-of-control development which were galloping toward it.”
One paradox of Mr. Redford’s success in popularizing Utah and the West is that the development he so wanted to avoid seemed to follow him anyway. The road from Salt Lake City to Sundance passes numerous subdivisions and strip malls.
Mr. Redford became familiar with Utah after marrying his first wife, Lola Van Wagenen, who was from Provo, on the western side of Mount Timpanogos. The couple met in California.
Chad Linebaugh, the general manager of the Sundance Mountain Resort, the hotel and ski area owned for decades by Mr. Redford and that hosted the Sundance Film Festival in its early years, says Mr. Redford would often tell visitors that he discovered the canyon after taking a wrong turn.
“He felt an energy from this place,” Mr. Linebaugh said. “A lot of us feel it.”
Even during Mr. Redford’s first visit to the canyon in the 1950s, a small ski resort called Timp Haven was already in operation. He bought it in the late 1960s and renamed it Sundance.
The closest school to the resort and the homes nearby was a 50-mile round trip away, so Mr. Redford set aside land for a one-room schoolhouse. Dr. Minton, whose children attended the school, estimates that Sundance has only around 50 full-time residents, not counting guests at the resort, which is currently being expanded.
In 2020, the resort was sold to investors with the proviso that more than 1,500 acres of its land would remain undeveloped. Mr. Redford set aside another 1,200 acres of his own that will remain wild.
Residents say wildlife remains plentiful in the canyon, including elk, moose, bobcat and beaver. Natural springs feed a mountain stream filled with rainbow trout.
The legacy of the conservation efforts will be felt for many generations, Ms. Mack said: “People are able to hike on lands that Robert Redford and his family have preserved. And they will be able to access those lands — forever.”
Susan C. Beachy contributed research. Jack Healy contributed reporting.
Thomas Fuller, a Page One Correspondent for The Times, writes and rewrites stories for the front page.
The post Robert Redford and His Beloved Utah Canyon appeared first on New York Times.
