The following is an excerpt from an oral history with former Parkite ReNae Rezac in May of 2021. Her words will be in italics.
ReNae held several jobs throughout her time in Park City, but worked in the City Planning Department for quite a while. She was there during the 2002 Winter Olympic Games, which Park City co-hosted with Salt Lake City.
So, I guess I was working in the Planning Department when we had the Olympics. What a blast. That was so fun.
She was one of the many volunteers getting people on the correct buses before and after events.
I had an interesting experience. For one of the events that were held at Deer Valley, there were only two of us that were up there doing the offloading of people to go up the event which wasn’t bad. When it got bad was after the event and everybody was in such an all-fired hurry to get off the mountain. There were only two of us trying to control these mobs of people. They actually got what I would consider a little out of control, pushing and shoving trying to get on the buses first. They just wanted to get down the mountain and go to the restaurant or doing whatever they had going on. It was a little stressful. I would say that the city was really good in changing the way they did things to accommodate that kind of mentality. The next time they had an event up there they had a lot more than two people to try to help people on the buses.
Credit: From Utah Digital Newspapers
ReNae was mostly too busy to catch any of the events.
I didn’t go to a lot of events. I worked a lot at the Transit Center loading. That was a different situation than people offloading from an event. These were people that were heading to events. It was really fun. Everybody was excited. We had buses going to different venues. We would have dumb little contests between the people that were lined up to go to the PCMR or the ones going to Deer Valley. It was really fun.
I had to ask: What kind of contests?
Trying to see who could do the loudest cheer. Just to keep them occupied and engaged and not focused on when their bus will get here.
Overall, ReNae loved the atmosphere of the Olympics, even if town was never the same after that.
I guess the traffic must have been horrendous, but what I remember is all the positive things. It was just awesome. But it was a double-edged sword. We welcomed the world here, then we weren’t a secret anymore and it really opened the door to more real estate development. We used to make jokes in the Planning Department that the billionaires were pushing out the millionaires.
Indeed, the Olympics kicked off a development boom in Park City that really has not stopped, and may not stop through the next time Park City hosts the Olympics in 2034.
You can share your Olympic memories with the Park City Museum by contacting Dalton Gackle at research@parkcityhistory.org or 435-429-1540.