Robert Redford first saw Mount Timpanogos in 1954, driving home from the University of Colorado to Los Angeles. The mountain changed his life, and years later he put a stake down on two acres in its shadow. That origin story, told through David Gessner’s essay The Movie Star and the Mountain, is a quiet reminder of how a single sighting can shape a career.
First Sight of Timpanogos
Redford was a young man when he spotted Timpanogos. He was driving west from Boulder, nearing Salt Lake City, when he followed an impulse off the main road. The mountain loomed above him, nearly twelve thousand feet high, with sheer rock walls covered in snow and patches of limestone glowing in the sun.
He stopped and stared. Then he rushed forward, climbing through a meadow of sage and sumac, into a field below a wall of rock blazing with aspen turning from yellow to orange. The hike quickened to a run. He noticed water flowing down the rock, staining the white stone orange where it was forever wet.
“It was so beautiful that I couldn’t pull myself away. The mountain, Timpanogos, was to me like Everest. It was Yosemite on a different scale.”
What He Found
The mountain’s name comes from the Timpanogos people, who lived nearby five hundred years ago. It roughly means “rock” or “river,” though some translations combine the two as “rock river” or “rocky torrent.” Redford felt a vague intuition that this place would matter, but he could not yet understand how.
His college year in Boulder had been restless. There was drinking, disdain for school, early attempts at art, and a sense of smallness back in Los Angeles, where his silent, judging father sat. The mountain lifted all of that. The confusion and anger vanished. Life felt larger.
The Drink at the Owl Bar
In December 2016, Gessner was invited to read at Sundance with his wife Nina and daughter Hadley. Robert Redford did not show up, but his presence hung over the festival. The Owl Bar, built in the 1890s and moved from Thermopolis, Wyoming, where it had been frequented by Butch Cassidy, was a gathering spot.
Gessner ordered tequila, the bartender’s recommendation for Redford’s drink. One night, the bartender told him the story of how Redford first found Sundance. Gessner had heard other versions that week, from Chad, the manager of Sundance, and from a woman who approached him after his reading in the Tree Room. The story was part of the place, as much as the crags of limestone that jutted out of the snow on Mount Timpanogos.
The Land He Bought
Redford did not move to the West like an easterner finding a new life in the Rockies, a trope he would later bring to vivid life in Jeremiah Johnson. Instead, he made his great discovery while driving west, on the way home from the University of Colorado.
When he first saw it, a primitive ski resort called Timp Haven occupied the spot. The story goes that Redford could not pull himself away. He lay in bed and thought about it. Whenever he had the chance to return, he did. He decided someday he would put a stake down there.
A Moment That Changed Him
The moment was a mix of impulses. One was covetous, to possess the place. The other was better — to stand below its beauty, just beauty, not for any purpose. It was not awe exactly, that easy word that often means nothing. It was being absorbed in something larger than himself.
Gessner’s essay is a meditation on that moment. He remembers the star and conservationist, a year after his death, and the mountain that began it all.
Meaning of Timpanogos
The mountain’s meaning took time to settle in. Redford felt a vague intuition that this place would be important, but he could not yet understand what Timpanogos would mean to him. His life was spread out uncertainly before him.
The story is simple, told in Gessner’s own words. It is a reminder that the things we see on the way home can shape us more than we ever expect.
Get the Notebook.
The day's best stories and every fresh verdict, in plain English, in your inbox by seven. One email a day, no more.