Fifteen years ago Dean Jackson agreed to move from Amarillo, Texas, to Provo in order to be a pastor at Rock Canyon Church.

He had concerns.

"I have to be honest -- at one point I was really worried about where I was moving to," Jackson said. "It was like, in the pastoral world, I'd been banished to Siberia. I was getting condolence calls.

"I literally came to Utah County pretty paranoid."

Bill Sederburg caught a fair amount of grief when he decided to leave Michigan, where he was fairly well known, to take the helm as president of Utah Valley State College.

"The standard joke was related to polygamy: 'In your contract, how many wives are included in thatfi' " he said. "It was awful. It really was unfair.

"The other thing was, 'Are you going to fit infi' The general conception is that Utah is different. What happens if you want to drink coffeefi Are you going to be able to drink a glass of wine without feeling ostracizedfi"

These men have ended up thriving in Utah County. They're among the state's biggest cheerleaders. Not everyone fares so well, however, and that worries business and economic development leaders -- because the experience of outsiders who move to the Wasatch Front could have profound implications for the state's future.

What's more, demographic data and historical trends suggest that Utah is on the verge of a major population shift. That could end up making the state more welcoming to those who come from elsewhere -- but the state they're being welcomed to could be quite different than the Utah of today.

Open armsfi

Jeff Edwards, president and CEO of the Economic Development Corp. of Utah, has heard a few newcomer stories that make him wince.

For example, one company sent a potential manager to the area with his wife to look for a house. They were driving around and found a house with a "for sale by owner" sign out front, so they stopped to talk to the owner -- and eventually asked him why he was selling the house.

The owner -- against his interests, even -- responded with a rant against all things Utah. He said he hated it here, that his kids couldn't make friends and that people were not friendly. The story makes Edwards shake his head -- of all the houses for sale, why did this visitor have to find that particular onefi

It's not an isolated incident.

"Coming from outside, the image that Utah has generally is a conservative, sort of inhospitable state to non-LDS people," Sederburg said. "It really kind of slows down and hurts the state's economic development opportunities."

And people still need help even if those economic development opportunities bear fruit in the form of new companies or employees.

Jackson, in fact, has been moved to open a consulting company to help businesses because of "the number of people who are moving here and then, after a short period of time, leaving."

"It's a twofold problem," he said. "One is, that's a huge expense and the people now are gone. But the bigger issue is, now those people who've had a bad experience -- they could've been our best resource for promotion for the state, and they've now become a liability."

Difficulties people from outside the state experience fall generally into two categories: misperceptions about Utah, and unrealistic expectations about what living in the state is like.

One misperception is associating "reactionary political views" with the LDS church, said Alex Simon, an associate professor of sociology at UVSC.

"My experience has been that there is quite a bit of diversity as far as political thought among Mormons," he said. "As far as Mormons as individuals, I've found them to be very welcoming."

Simon added, however, that the climate is not always welcoming to a diversity of views.

"I would say it's repressive to a certain degree -- not because of the LDS church, but due to political reactionaries who may or may not be Mormon," he said.

That climate distinguishes Utah from neighboring Wyoming, where Simon lived before moving here five years ago.

"Wyoming -- my impression was more of a libertarian brand" of conservatism that emphasized respect for individual choices, he said. "Here ... people really do feel a need to dictate to others. People have a patriarchal attitude toward students to where they really are 'children.' They need to be 'protected' from certain views."

Another potentially confusing area is language, Sederburg said; newcomers often have to learn new uses for familiar words.

"The word diversity, for example. I shouldn't use that word here," he said. "We should use 'pluralistic' ... because 'diversity' is a politically charged word in Utah more so than it is in other states.

"The word 'culture' itself is tricky. When I think of culture, I think of the totality of the social system. ... I think in Utah, and Utah County, when you say 'culture,' they're really talking about the LDS church. I've made that error a number of times. I refer to culture, and what somebody hears is, 'You're commenting on the LDS church.' "

That's a minefield a lot of people walk into inadvertently, Jackson said.

"People come to Utah and make non-negotiable mistakes," he said. "One of the things that is huge in this valley is when people perceive an attack on the church. And it doesn't have to be literal. That kind of perception is a very difficult thing to live down."

One thing after another

One slightly gruesome, but helpful, analogy for a newcomer struggling in Utah is -- strangely enough -- carbon monoxide poisoning.

"It's a building type of thing," explains Jackson, who at one point was a deputy coroner. "You can get carbon monoxide poisoning. ... They can get you all fixed up, they send you home. The next time you don't need near as much carbon monoxide to get in the same amount of trouble."

What happens to newcomers, especially if they're not LDS, is a series of frustrations with little things -- attitudes toward coffee, an unfamiliar social structure, restrictive liquor laws, real or perceived judgmental attitudes in the community -- that end up being overwhelming.

"What's going on sometimes in our community is, we've got someone over here who just freaks out," Jackson said. "They're saying, 'I can't deal with this anymore.' The problem is, this person has been dealing with a series of little deals, and now it's a big deal."

One answer to that situation is to make sure people and businesses understand that Utah is a different place while providing help comprehending those differences.

"When we're in the midst of doing economic development in Utah and we try to sell Utah as just like any other big city or state in the country, we're misleading people," Jackson said. "People come with this expectation: 'If I come to Salt Lake City it'll be just like Denver. It's going to be like Albuquerque, New Mexico.' And it's not.

"This is a different community. That's not a bad thing. But it will be perceived as a bad thing if we don't lead with it."

There's an effort to do just that, said the EDCU's Edwards.

"Our biggest challenge is overcoming the perceptions that are out there," he said, such as the idea that Utah is isolated and remote, or is universally ultra-conservative. "We try to counteract that as much as we can -- primarily by having them talk to real people.

"A lot of people who have never been here before perceive Utah as a big desert. They have no idea that the mountains are that close and that beautiful."

On the cusp

People have been coming to Utah for a long time, but data suggest that more and greater varieties of people will be coming to the state in the immediate future. And a new book from two University of Utah researchers portrays "a state that is at the cusp of significant demographic change."

Historically, Utah's population has tended to surge during good economic times, such as when railroads and mining arrived and expanded, the introduction of federal defense facilities and the construction boom leading up to the 2002 Olympics.

That's what an analysis of Census data by the Bureau of Economic and Business Research at the University of Utah found in 2002 -- and Utah is in the middle of an expanding economy again.

That means a couple of things, according to the report. Utah became much more ethnically diverse in the 1990s and that will continue, with the largest influx probably continuing to come from Mexico and Central America. And, once new residents -- wherever they may come from -- establish family and community networks here, it makes it easier for others to follow them.

The increase in ethnic diversity is also noted by contributors to "Utah at the Beginning of the New Millennium: A Demographic Perspective," a new book from the University of Utah Press.

The book also notes, however, that as the Latino population as grown, so has its level of segregation from the majority population. And while the proportion of the state's population that is LDS has declined from an estimated 75 percent to about two-thirds, it will continue to be a dominant group in the state.

While challenges remain, there are also signs that Utah is at least more ready to welcome people from elsewhere -- and a big part of that developed out of the 2002 Olympic games.

"The best thing that ever happened to Utah was the Olympics," said Jackson, who is helping organize another large world event -- the 2007 International Rotary convention in Salt Lake City.

"The opposition to the Olympics coming was fearful that, somehow, Utah would lose its culture or fall into this house of degradation," he said. "What happened was people stepped up to the plate and said, 'We have an opportunity to host the world. Let's do it.'

"When they did, by and large most people walked away and said, 'This is awesome.'"

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.