Town file
Holladay, Utah
Holladay, Utah (Salt Lake County, Utah) is the town in one episode of Small Town Murder, the comedy true-crime podcast: episode 189, "The Lego Murders" (17 September 2020). Holladay, Utah, sits about twenty minutes from downtown Salt Lake City in Salt Lake County, eight and a half square miles on the edge of the city sprawl.
- Town
- Holladay
- County
- Salt Lake County
- State
- Utah
- Country
- USA
- Episodes
- 189
- Approximate location
- 40.660, -111.823
Episode 189 / 17 September 2020 / 154 min / full
The Lego Murders
"We're going all the way this week to Utah, to Holladay, Utah, north central Utah, about 20 minutes to downtown Salt Lake City, a suburb in Salt Lake County" about 0:05:05
The case: Murder of Lucille Minor son (February 1991); Murder of Elizabeth 'Trudy' Calabresi (February 24, 1998). Read the case file.
The figures, as told in 2020
- Population
- 30,793
- Median age
- 38
- Median household income
- $81,409
- Median home value
- $513,100
- Two-bedroom rent
- $1,100 a month
- Cost of living
- 135
- Religious
- 76%
- Property crime
- ▼ about one third
- Violent crime
- ▼ about one third
History, in brief
- Holladay was born in South Carolina; records disagree over whether his middle name was Daniel. about 0:06:11
- He married Catherine Beesley Higgins, also of South Carolina, in 1822 in South Carolina; they had ten children and nine survived. about 0:06:58
- His great-grandfather was 'the Ranger' Holladay of Belafonte, Virginia, an ancestor of Doc Holladay. about 0:08:47
- Ben Holladay, known as the Stage Coach King, was also in the family. about 0:09:11
- In 1847 a group of Mormon pioneers known as the Mississippi Company entered the Salt Lake Valley, among them Holladay. about 0:10:33
- Within weeks of arriving they found a spring-fed stream and called it Spring Creek, near what is now Kentucky Avenue. about 0:12:30
- Most of the group returned to the main settlement at Great Salt Lake for the winter; two or three people built dugouts along the stream and stayed. about 0:12:46
- Holladay became branch president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the village was named Holladay's Berg, then shortened to Holladay. about 0:13:25
- Holladay is the oldest continuously inhabited settlement in Utah because Salt Lake City was abandoned in 1857 when an army occupied it. about 0:13:52
- Cottonwood Mall was built in Holladay in the 1960s and was Utah's first enclosed shopping mall; it closed in 2007. about 0:14:11
The reviews read out
3 stars
"Likes being close to the mountains and feeling safe, but complains of poor bicycle infrastructure and a lack of sidewalks and accessibility."about 0:14:56
3 stars
"Great people, good places to eat and beautiful houses, but it is like entering a film about high school students: many cliques and families who have been there forever."about 0:17:51
3 stars
"A nice little suburb, but the families are cliquey, especially around Olympus Junior High and Olympus High School; plenty to do nearby, but the kids are awful."about 0:18:33
no stars
"The only good thing is that natural disasters are infrequent, mostly floods and earthquakes with the occasional tornado; mighty hot in summer and impenetrably snowy in winter."about 0:19:12
"A New Year's Eve 2014 review: not a big party scene, but the microbreweries around Salt Lake City are excellent."about 0:20:12
Nearest Small Town Murder towns
- South Salt Lake, Utah5.1 miles
- American Fork, Utah20 miles
- Pleasant Grove, Utah20 miles
- Oakley, Utah29 miles
- Washington Terrace, Utah36 miles
- Payson, Utah43 miles
Everything here is as told in the episode, on the date it went out; figures and places may have changed since. Endings are covered: open an episode and use the spoiler switch to read them.