Filmed on Tuesday, February 27 2024, I drive around St. George, UT to see what's going on.
The settlement was named after George A. Smith, an LDS Church apostle.
St. George was founded as part of the "cotton mission" in 1861 under the direction of Latter Day Saint apostle Erastus Snow. While the crop never became a successful commodity, the area steadily grew in population.
In April 1877, the LDS Church completed the St. George Utah Temple. It was the church's third temple and is the oldest still in active use.
In the early 1950s, St. George received the brunt of the fallout of above-ground nuclear testing at the Yucca Flats/Nevada Test Site northwest of Las Vegas. Winds routinely carried the fallout of these tests directly through the St. George and southern Utah area.
Marked increases in the frequency of cancer in the population, not limited to leukemia, lymphoma, thyroid cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, bone cancer, brain tumors, and gastrointestinal tract cancers, were reported from the mid-1950s until the early 1980s.
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