Provo

Sister cities

• Meissen

History

The Provo area was originally called Timpanogas, a Numic (Ute people) word perhaps meaning "rock river". The area was inhabited by the Timpanogos. The ample food from the Provo River made the Timpanogos a peaceful people. The area also served as the traditional meeting place for the Ute and Shoshone tribes and was used as a common location for worship of their creator deity. Silvestre Vélez de Escalante, a Spanish Franciscan missionary-explorer, is considered the first European explorer to have visited the area in 1776. He was guided by two Timpanogos Utes, whom he called Silvestre and Joaquín. Escalante chronicled this first European exploration across the Great Basin Desert. The Europeans did not build a permanent settlement but traded with the Timpanogos, whom they called Lagunas (lake people) or Come Pescado (fish eaters). Escalating tensions with the Timpanog contributed to the Walker War. Fort Utah was renamed Provo in 1850 for Étienne Provost, an early French-Canadian trapper who arrived in the region in 1825. In 1850, the first schoolhouse was constructed in Provo, built within Utah Fort. As more Latter-day Saints arrived, Provo quickly grew as a city. It soon was nicknamed The Garden City with a large number of fruit orchards and gardens there. In 1872, a railroad reached Provo. It was also this year that the Provo Woolen Mills opened. They were the first large factory in Provo and employed about 150 people, initially mainly skilled textile laborers who had emigrated from Britain. The construction of the blast furnace plant of the Columbia Steel Company in 1923-1924 marked the arrival of heavy industry in Provo, albeit most of the pig iron was shipped to the company's steel mills in California. The plant supplied manufactured gas to the area and in 1948…

Geography

Provo lies on the eastern bank of Utah Lake in Utah Valley at an elevation of . According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of , of which is land and , or 5.66%, is water. The Wasatch Range contains many peaks within Utah County along the east side of the Wasatch Front. One of them, known as Y Mountain, towers over the city. There is a large hillside letter Y made of whitewashed concrete halfway up the steep mountain, built in the early part of the 20th century to commemorate BYU (original plans included construction use of all three letters). Wild deer (and less frequently, cougars, and moose) still roam the mountains (and occasionally the city streets). The geography allows for hiking, skiing, fishing and other outdoor activities. Provo's climate can be classified as either a hot-summer Mediterranean climate classification (Köppen: Csa) or as a cool semi-arid climate (Köppen: BSk). Overall, annual rainfall at the location of BYU is around ; however, the western part of the metropolitan area near Orem is substantially drier, receiving only around of precipitation and consequently has a cool semi-arid climate (Köppen: BSk). |source 2 = Weather Atlas }}

Race & ethnicity

Most-observed species

• Mallard

  Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  15,134
• American Robin

  Turdus migratorius Linnaeus, 1766 · Aves
  13,686
• European Starling

  Sturnus vulgaris Linnaeus, 1758 · Aves
  12,217
• Song Sparrow

  Melospiza melodia (A.Wilson, 1810) · Aves
  10,419
• House Finch

  Haemorhous mexicanus (P.L.Statius Müller, 1776) · Aves
  10,370
• Red-winged Blackbird

  Agelaius phoeniceus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  9,202
• Black-capped Chickadee

  Poecile atricapillus (Linnaeus, 1766) · Aves
  8,932
• American Coot

  Fulica americana Gmelin, 1789 · Aves
  8,695

Largest nearby schools

• Timpview High
  High · PROVO · 2,341 students · 23.6:1 ratio
• Pleasant Grove High
  High · PLEASANT GROVE · 2,084 students · 26.4:1 ratio
• Provo High
  High · PROVO · 1,988 students · 24.9:1 ratio
• Maple Mountain High
  High · SPANISH FORK · 1,740 students · 26.8:1 ratio
• Springville High
  High · SPRINGVILLE · 1,612 students · 22.7:1 ratio
• Spanish Fork High
  High · SPANISH FORK · 1,519 students · 24.9:1 ratio
• Mountain View High
  High · OREM · 1,508 students · 24.3:1 ratio
• Lakeridge Jr High
  Middle · OREM · 1,388 students · 26.2:1 ratio

Most recent

• M 2.86 — 2026-08-07
  6 km NNW of Saratoga Springs, Utah
• M 2.81 — 2026-02-22
  7 km SW of Clear Creek, Utah
• M 3.52 — 2026-02-14
  4 km NNW of West Valley City, Utah
• M 3.5 — 2026-02-05
  6 km WNW of Lehi, Utah
• M 2.71 — 2026-02-05
  41 km ENE of Oakley, Utah
• M 2.97 — 2026-01-22
  41 km SSE of Evanston, Wyoming