St. George, Utah

St. George or Saint George^[2] is a city in and the county seat of Washington County, Utah, United States. It is Utah's fifth-most populous city and the largest outside the Wasatch Front, with a population of 95,342 at the 2020 census.^[3] The St. George metropolitan statistical area has an estimated 208,000 residents. Located in southwestern Utah on the Arizona border, it lies in the northeasternmost part of the Mojave Desert, immediately south of the Pine Valley Mountains, which mark the southern boundary of the Great Basin. St. George lies slightly northwest of the Colorado Plateau, which ends at the Hurricane Fault.^[6]

St. George was settled in 1861 as a cotton mission, earning it the nickname "Dixie". While the crop never became a successful commodity, the area steadily grew in population. Today, the St. George region is well known for its warm climate relative to the rest of the state, resulting year-round outdoor recreation, and proximity to several state parks, Zion National Park, and the Grand Canyon. Utah Tech University, in St. George, is an NCAA Division I institution. The city is 118 miles (190 km) northeast of Las Vegas and 300 miles (480 km) south-southwest of Salt Lake City on Interstate 15.