Is A Former Ghost Town Now The Best Place To Live In America?

Although Park City, Utah, was just voted the "best place to live' in America by Outside magazine, it's not a bad place to visit, either.

Is a Former Ghost Town Now the Best Place to Live in America? (Slideshow)

Most visitors come in the winter—a time time when Park City has snow coming out the Wasatch—to ski at one of the area's three major resorts or to get their cinema fix at Robert Redford's annual Sundance Film Festival.  It's also a great place to hang out in the summer and fall, as I found out on a visit last week.

But if you had come here 30 years ago, you would have found a ghost town that time had passed by. In the late 1800s, Park City, which is now only a 40-minute drive into the mountains from Salt Lake International Airport, was crawling with miners digging for silver and lead.

After being dormant for most of the 20th Century, Park City started coming alive in the 1980s and '90s, and its renaissance was capped by the 2002 Winter Olympics, whose major outdoor events were held here.

Read on for my experiences at this former ghost town turned into a bustling high-end resort.