This storyoriginally appeared on CityLaband is part of theClimate Deskcollaboration. When Latter-day Saint migrants arrived in Utah in 1847, a verse in Isaiah served as consolation to them in the dessicated landscape: “The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose.” Lately, the desert has blossomed nowhere more than the St. George area, in the state’s southern reaches.

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