Posted on 04/17/2002 2:34:50 AM PDT by maquiladora
Utah has its very own Shire. Just turn in at Rivendell, and you"re there.
The Salt Lake subdivision"s streets are all named after characters and places in the Tolkein trilogy, "Lord of the Rings."
There"s Bree Street, Treebeard, Ettenmoor, Brandywine, Brandybuck, Shire Circle and others familiar to Rings fans. Located in Taylorsville, near the intersection of 40th West and 5400 South, it"s a small neighborhood that in many ways lives up to the image of Frodo Baggins" beloved Shire.
"It"s a really good neighborhood," said Luisa Vea, who has lived on Gandalf Drive for 24 years. "All our children who grew up together are still very close and are still friends today."
Jon Warner, a second- generation resident, said there"s a surprising lack of clannishness in the neighborhood. His family moved in when he was little more than a year old. Warner grew up, got married, and brought his bride back. He bought the house next door to the one he grew up in when it came up for sale.
"Even as a kid, I knew this was a special place. My cousins would have to get in a car to go visit their friend"s houses, but I would just go across the street,"" Warner said.
Sharon and Ladd Tanner have lived on Wilderland for 13 years, and like most of the residents, had never read the trilogy before moving in. No one really remembers how the subdivision streets got their names, though there"s a legend that the developer did it because his daughter loved the books.
"We have a tape of the movie "The Hobbit." It"s a cartoon and we can hear our street names in the film. I thought that was fun," Tanner said.
The Tanners know personally of the neighborhood"s penchant for helping each other. When one neighbor was having a swimming pool dug, they asked to have the dirt, which they planned to use in a back yard landscaping project. Unfortunately, the contractor dumped the huge hill of dirt in their driveway and left it there. But it wasn"t a problem for long.
"All the neighbors showed up with wheelbarrows and shovels and just carried it all, load by load, into the back yard,"" she said.
Every summer, there"s a neighborhood party on Gandalf so neighbors stay acquainted with each other and meet new residents. At Easter, there"s a neighborhood egg hunt for children, and people take yearly turns dying eggs.
While the Shire-like neighborhood may be special, it"s not perfect. In its quarter-century existence, there have been a murder, two burglaries, and a brief rash of car break-ins.
"From my dealings, it"s a low crime area,"" said Sgt. Vaughn Allenof West Patrol Sheriff"s office, who helped get rid of two drug houses that once existed in the neighborhood.
"It"s kind of an Island,"" Allen said of the subdivision. "It"s because all those streets dead end, and there"s only two that empty out onto 40th Street,"" he said.
There"s also diversity. The Vea"s are Tongan. There are others from South America and Britain. Adelfa Ford, who has lived in the subdivision 13 years, is from Venezuela. She says, "It"s fun to live in a fairy tale neighborhood. This is home. My husband was offered a job promotion, but we would have had to move, so we turned it down.""
When Frodo finished his quest to save his world from the evil Dark Lord Sauron, he returned to the Shire with his best friend, Sam. He found that even though the Shire had been touched by the evil around it, the basic goodness of the place remained unchanged.
Jon Warner feels that"s also been the case in the Shire"s Utah namesake.
"It"s a really unusual neighborhood. It"s stayed the same, even though the world has changed,"" he said.
Here is what happened to our Hobbit Hole builder perhaps!
Ecurbh, want to ping the ringers, Ring Ping King?
Strange...it showed up in my Hobbit Hole sidebar this morning. I would have pinged the ringers but I thought it showed up in their sidebars too.
Sensible hobbbits. Cute find.
Didn't notice any Orcs or Nazgul in Nevada though, just gamblers, none of them in LOTR!
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