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SALT LAKE CITY — Bryant Heath came up with an unusual and ambitious goal two years ago to run through every street in Salt Lake City.
He didn't do it out of pandemic lockdown boredom nor did he think it would be very transformative. The Sugar House resident just wanted to change up his exercise routine as a New Year's resolution.
"I kind of knew roughly how many miles I tend to run in a given year and then I just kind of looked at a map of the city and estimated that this is probably a doable project within 2020," he said, reflecting on it.
The pandemic made it difficult at times, with his shifting schedules and all, but he ultimately completed his goal toward the end of the year, mapping out his journey through the hundreds of streets he trekked through.
While that was interesting enough, a funny thing happened along the way. He couldn't help but notice little odds and ends across the city that he had never really noticed before.
This led him into a completely different hobby that's slowly gaining a following online through the Instagram account "SLSees." He started posting photos of those interesting things; and in February, he launched an interactive map that allows people to view these interesting discoveries on their own.
An eye-opening experience
For someone so invested in highlighting little parts of Salt Lake City now, Heath admits he didn't really know much about Salt Lake City until relatively recently. He's originally from Texas and moved to Utah with his wife a little over a decade ago for work.
He figures his experience was similar to most people. He spent most of his time around the same parts of town, such as his neighborhood, the route to work or the grocery store.
"I would occasionally go out, maybe hit the trails up against the Wasatch (Mountains) or maybe take a weekend trip down to a state park or something like that," he said. "Whenever you look at a map of the city, it kind of dawns on you pretty quickly that you kind of stay in some of the same areas."
At some point leading into 2020, he thought about changing things up a bit. Then, as he ran through every street, he started to notice things he hadn't noticed before and began to learn more about the community that extends beyond his neighborhood.
If you take a step back a little bit and just get out of your normal routine to just look around … (there's) so much joy that can bring.
–Salt Lake City resident Bryant Heath
He found multiple people have large animal-themed ornaments in their lawns, including about a half-dozen homeowners with Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton ornaments on their lawns. One homeowner, in the Avenues neighborhood, regularly dresses their dinosaur for whatever the nearest holiday is.
There's the small Gilgal Sculpture Garden in Central City — one of the more unique artwork spots one can come across in the city. In terms of architecture, there's Summum Pyramid in Poplar Grove. There are dozens of murals, especially downtown.
"Whenever you kind of run on every single street in the city, you can't help but notice a bunch of these unusual items that are just scattered in each and every neighborhood in the city," Heath said. "When you're driving, you're going so quick … but when you're running, you have some time to look around. … There's just so much out there."
Highlighting the interesting discoveries
Given all that is out there, Health found himself talking about or explaining little things he found interesting in the city. It led him to launch SLSees in February 2021, an Instagram account that quickly built a niche following among residents.
The account posts some other things along the Salt Lake Valley, like the neighboring cities of Millcreek, South Salt Lake and West Valley City, but mostly focuses on quirks in Salt Lake City.
It started by featuring a praying mantis sculpture outside a home on 2700 South; the next, a series of gnomes placed in the roundabout on 900 South — which now features a giant whale statue. There are now 6,000 people who view his posts of "unusual sights" in and around Salt Lake City. And the number grows with every unique find Heath adds.
As the posts started piling up — he's up to over 400 now after about 14 months — he thought that it would be difficult for new followers, say new people to the city, to catch up to the earliest posts. So he went back to his earliest posts and started mapping them in an interactive format that allows anyone to find unique items around them.
Over 40,000 people have viewed the map since it was published two months ago, receiving positive feedback.
"That is really entertaining," one person tweeted when it was first published.
Heath's goal is that residents — or visitors of Salt Lake City — will ultimately explore beyond the same sights and maybe find something interesting and unique. He hopes people can find the same joy in it as he has over the past two years.
He adds that it also helps people realize that even in a city of 200,000 people or so, there are plenty of commonalities even within the differences in every neighborhood.
"I've continued on to explore and just love the entire city as a whole, rather than just the parts (I was) most used to," he said. "If you take a step back a little bit and just get out of your normal routine to just look around … (there's) so much joy that can bring."
