Once gravel, the road through the Gap now is paved, bringing more visitors to view the petroglyphs etched in the face of the Red Hills. This ancient rock art wall, which archaeologists believe served as a solar calendar for passing American Indian tribes, was threatened earlier this year when the Bureau of Land Management considered allowing oil and gas leases in the area.
"Sometimes when you live in a landscape, you stop seeing it," says Cotter, a printmaker and fine artist who has visited the Gap once a week for the 15 years she has lived in Iron County. "Artists do have the power to save something by turning their attention to it."
Maybe it's because Cotter is a relative newcomer here, not a descendant of Mormon settlers, that she sees things with fresh eyes. She drew upon the tradition of art pilgrimages in creating Mapping the Gap, an art book composed of maps, text and drawings that will have the heft of sculpture by the time it's finished.
She recalls trekking to European landscapes preserved in paintings of artists like Cezanne and Van Gogh. Or visiting the windmills of La Mancha, Spain, the image that sparked Cervantes' Don Quixote.
And it seems fitting that Cotter would think to use art to draw attention to - maybe even stop time - in a place she loves.
Iron County has made money through a devotion to its past, drawing visitors by marketing its timeless redrock canyons and its pioneer heritage. But nothing stops time better than the region's biggest attraction, Cedar City's Shakespearean Festival, which celebrates the classic plays of a long-dead artist.
About 40 percent of its tickets are sold to out-of-staters. Shakespearean Festival officials, who like to brag about the Tony Award they won in 2000, claim the festival injects as much as $64 million annually into the local economy.
Locals say the area's cultural roots stretch back to the 1850s and '60s, when Mormon settlers Brigham Young sent to establish an iron mine staged plays and danced in Fiddlers Canyon.
Later, they built an opera house, established community choirs and brass bands and traveling theatrical troupes, then founded a teacher's college that grew into Southern Utah University.
Now, Parowan's own troupe mounts a musical every spring on the stage of the restored AÂladdin Theater, circa 1928. Cedar City's downtown is anchored by the Heritage Theatre, a new $8 million complex that hosts a showcase of Neil Simon plays, community orchestra performances and, this season, the county's 65th annual Messiah concert.
Theater, in tandem with the county's largest employer, the 7,000-student university, serves as a "value-added asset" for people interested in leaving behind big-city commutes. In Iron County, you don't have to drive far to see first-run movies or live theater.
"We are a very rural community that has a fantastic culture to it," says Terry Keyes, economic development director for the county and Cedar City. "You only get this kind of local theater if you live in San Francisco or Orange County."
In the summer, Cedar City serves, surprisingly, as a cultural and recreation magnet, in the same way Park City's Sundance Film Festival draws Hollywood every winter. In the past few years, its growth spurt has rivaled that of other Western resort towns.
In cafes and offices and gas stations across Iron County, everyone talks about real estate. Housing prices jumped 34 percent in the third quarter of this year, topped only by the explosive growth in neighboring Washington County.
As locals like to say: Salt Lakers move to balmy St. George to get out of the weather, while Las Vegas residents flock to the four seasons of Cedar City. Some folks in Parowan, the gateway to the natural rock monuments of Cedar Breaks and the ski town of Brian Head, say their hometown now feels like a bedroom community for Nevada, a weekend destination for all of Las Vegas.
But there's no danger that Parowan or Brian Head or Cedar City is becoming another Sedona or Ashland or even Park City. There's a time warp in Iron County, despite the mini-mansions behind Cedar's Wal-Mart and the hobby horse ranchettes to the south in Kanarraville.
You won't find the patina of sophistication and tourist wealth like in other gallery-rich resort towns, or an infestation of granola heads and mountain bikers like in Moab. Locals have watched a rotating cycle of nightclubs and fine-dining restaurants open during the theater season and close their doors for good before the winter is through.
As you might expect in rural Utah, the art served here is classic - and safe. You won't hear the f-word, even when the company is producing the work of contemporary playwrights, says Fred Adams, the Shakespearean Festival founder who is still leading the company in its 44th season. Theatergoers here are conservative enough to complain about the scantily clad temptresses in this fall's production of "Pippin," the '70s-era, find-your-piece-of-the-sky musical.
And you won't find the futon dealers and bars and head shops that line the streets of other out-of-the-way college towns. Students here, Mormon or not, seem caught up by safer, legal pursuits, such as outdoor recreation, college sports or maybe even their studies; few seem interested in investing time or money to support the kind of retailers that are an integral part of the college vibe.
There are signs of change, though, as more of the people who used to be referred to as "outsiders," now just "newcomers," settle in. You won't see much of the avant-garde influences of indie culture, but locals point out two massage schools and two coffee shops, both offering Internet access.
There's also Groovacious, where the eclectic inventory sold in well-labeled CD bins suggest the sensibilities of its music-fan owners, Tim and Lisa Cretsinger. They also sell vinyl records, used literary paperbacks and a rainbow coalition of Lisa's hand-made crocheted watchcaps.
Even the store's cat, an orange-and-white stray dubbed Mr. Waits, acts like a rock star. "He eats out of an ashtray and drinks out of a coffee mug," Lisa Cretsinger jokes. "He's a regular Keith Richards."
Since moving the store from Oregon to Utah in 2000, the couple have worked long hours to promote independent music, offering open-mike nights for local songwriters and launching Groovefest, a free summer music festival that books touring blues and bluegrass acts.
Business is better than ever, Lisa Cretsinger says. But she does get tired of hearing the same old thing from shoppers. "They say, 'How are you guys doing?' and we always get defensive. Why can't this be here?"
Here is a place where art is embedded in rock, whether you're staring at a local artist's plein-air landscapes or awed by petroglyphs carved into the face of the Red Hills. Spend a few days talking to residents, and the idea of the ancients' solar calendar seems as strikingly practical as the names chiseled into the sandstone grave markers in Parowan's pioneer cemetery.
Dan Evans, 84, will tell you about the craft that went into building the rock wall surrounding the graveyard. His family lost their ranch during the Depression, lost everything, and his father put food on the table as foreman of the WPA crew that built the wall.
Now, out of that redrock, Evans has built a monument to his father. Inside, there's a computer database that bridges the gap between the living and the dead, preserving the names on all the graves in the cemetery.
This is the 16th in a series profiling Utah's 29 counties. Next: Uintah County, Nov. 20.
