San Antonio to Provo Movers

Provo is the seat of Utah County and the anchor of the Provo–Orem metro, sitting at about 4,550 feet on the floor of Utah Valley with the Wasatch Range rising straight up to the east and freshwater Utah Lake, the largest natural lake in the state, spreading out to the west. Mount Timpanogos — nearly 11,800 feet — dominates the skyline to the north, and the big white "Y" for Brigham Young University is scored into the foothills above town, with Provo Canyon (US-189) cutting east toward Sundance and Deer Creek Reservoir. The neighborhoods each carry their own character: the revived downtown along Center Street, where the Provo City Center Temple and the Nu Skin towers stand a few blocks apart; the student-dense Joaquin and "Tree Streets" pressed up against the BYU campus; the foothill benches of Edgemont, Rock Canyon, and Indian Hills; the larger-lot Riverbottoms strung along the Provo River; and the west-bench Grandview blocks looking out over the lake. It is worth knowing going in that BYU sets the tone here — Provo skews young, family-oriented, and heavily Latter-day Saint.

The economy is broader and more energetic than a college town's. BYU, with roughly 34,000 students, and Utah Valley University just north in Orem — the largest public university in the state — together employ thousands, while the southern end of the "Silicon Slopes" tech belt runs north up I-15 through Lindon, American Fork, and Lehi. Nu Skin is headquartered downtown, Qualtrics was founded in Provo, and Vivint, Ancestry, Doterra in Pleasant Grove, and Young Living toward Spanish Fork give the valley a dense cluster of software and direct-sales headquarters that has been pulling Texas talent for years. Intermountain Health's Utah Valley Hospital anchors the medical side, Provo was one of the first Google Fiber cities in the country, and Provo Municipal Airport now runs commercial flights out of a new terminal. The metro regularly lands near the top of national rankings for job growth, entrepreneurship, and family life, and it holds one of the youngest median ages in the United States.

The draw, in the end, is the setting. Sundance Mountain Resort is about twenty minutes up Provo Canyon on the flank of Timpanogos, the Cottonwood and Park City resorts are a bit over an hour north, and the Provo River — a blue-ribbon trout stream — runs right through the canyon with a paved parkway trail beside it; Utah Lake offers sailing and paddling on the valley floor, and the Y Trail and Timpanogos Cave sit minutes from the neighborhoods. A family coming from San Antonio should go in clear-eyed on the money, though: housing costs noticeably more in Utah Valley than in San Antonio, and Utah charges a flat state income tax of around 4.5% where Texas charges none, so it pays to run the full math on a job offer before the move rather than after. The other honest note is winter air — Utah County is prone to temperature inversions that trap haze on the valley floor for days at a stretch between storms.