Utahns worry proposed data center could transform the ‘mythical American West’

On the road to the proposed Stratos data center project, you will see more cows than people. From Interstate 15 near Brigham City and Corinne, it takes more than an hour traveling on mostly dirt and gravel roads to get to the edge of the site where Kevin O’Leary intends to build a massive data center campus. Nearby, the Salt Wells — an area where the developers had applied for but since withdrawn an application for water rights — are a quiet, wide open space where birds flit around grasses and swim in streams, dragonflies dance above springs and water bubbles up from the ground. Rhonda Lauritzen, whose family owns property nearby for the business her parents founded, describes western Box Elder County as the “mythical American West.” Video by Trevor Christensen of The Salt Lake Tribune