Looking back at 2023 in pictures

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Utah Business

In 1851, when Brigham Young led a contingent of Utah’s Mormon pioneers to the shore of the Great Salt Lake to celebrate the Fourth of July and unveil the state’s first territorial flag, the first toast of the evening was dedicated to the lake itself.

“To the Great Salt Lake,” the toast, as recorded by the Deseret News, began. “As she has hitherto been oblivious to the birthday of freedom and independence; may she this day be awakened to her sense of duty, and seek by her briny sympathies to preserve the Union, till she shall become a component part thereof, even if she has to pickle it.”

At the time, the capital was known as The City of the Great Salt Lake. It was shortened to Salt Lake City in 1868.

But in the past two years, Dave Shearer, manager of the Great Salt Lake State Park and Marina, and an amateur historian of the lake, says he has sensed a change in the wind. The COVID-19 pandemic and all that has followed has awakened residents to a desire for a closer connection to nature, and the simultaneous water crisis has prompted calls to preserve and expand opportunities for locals to experience the state’s natural wonders.

Picturing 2023

Remember the beginning of the year when the Wasatch Front got a huge snow dump? Or remember when President Joe Biden visited Utah this summer?

For the talented photojournalists of the Deseret News, their job is to capture that moment. Freeze it in time. History documented.

As we look back at 2023, our photographers told stories of life here in Utah and around the world, including war-torn Ukraine and the dangerous Darién Gap inside Colombia, through the lenses of their cameras.

Read more and take a look at some of the great images our staff and contributing photographers took throughout 2023.

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