For decades this city has been the heart of Utah conservatism - a strong counterpoint to the state's more-liberal capital, Salt Lake City. And for much of the 1990s, Provo was Utah's "second city" in number of residents before giving up the spot to rapidly growing West Valley City.

With no space left to grow, Provo has seen its population numbers settle down. There is no room for new neighborhoods, and many longtime residents and newcomers are choosing the burbs - located north and south of this Utah County seat.

In the process, the city is shaking off its image as a bastion for the white middle class as its population becomes more diverse. The best place to witness this dramatic shift: the public schools.

Jose Enriquez, assistant principal at Provo High School, says if you give him enough time, he will show you how the oft-stereotyped city no longer is the place outsiders perceive it to be.

"You're going to see a different Provo," Enriquez says. "I'll show you how much there are misconceptions of this place."

Take, for example, Enriquez's story. The El Salvador native moved to Provo in 1993, when he came to Brigham Young University on a wrestling scholarship.

Since that time, the Provo School District's Latino population has shot from about 5 percent of the student body to 20 percent.

Enriquez believes he wouldn't have his current job if it wasn't for that shifting demographic.

"Now I'm seeing a lot more acceptance and a lot more camaraderie that should have happened [years] before," he says.

Welcome to Provo 2006.

Growing pains: State estimates put Provo's population at 114,224, Utah's third-largest, behind West Valley City at 116,781 and Salt Lake City at 182,046. Experts estimate that more than 15 percent of Provo's residents are Latino.

Those numbers may not be eye-popping, but they show that the 98 percent white, Mormon population many mistakenly believe Provo to have is dwindling.

Consider:

There are entire retail blocks devoted to Spanish speakers. One in particular boasts a food market, a video store, a restaurant and a pawnshop - all geared to the Latino culture. The annual Festival Latino Americana that Provo hosts has outgrown the Historic County Courthouse grounds where it has been performed for three years.

Provo School District Director of Student Services Greg Hudnall says the explosion in Latino students is causing ripples throughout the schools. For example, English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) programs went from being in only two of 18 district schools to every school.

"We have the opportunity to educate culturally," Hudnall says. "But it impacts your district when you have very few Spanish-speaking teachers."

The change in diversity isn't without cultural growing pains.

In a recent presentation titled "Provo City School District: A Changing Community," Hudnall shared that Provo is Utah's No. 3 district in numbers of youth-in-custody programs and that 48 percent of the district's students qualify for free or reduced-price school lunch.

That's not all that is happening. Only 19 percent of Provo homes have school-age children, and 58 percent of Provo's housing is rental units. That means families here are more mobile, and classrooms are shrinking in student numbers. Overall, the Provo district's growth was a mere net increase of 44 students last year, paling in comparison with Nebo School District to the south, which had an 1,830-student increase, and Alpine to the north with its 2,852-student bump.

Still, district ESOL specialist Julene Kendall believes Provo schools are opening up and trying to adapt to the changing population.

"We can reach out more," Kendall says. "I really feel like part of this comes down to letting the Hispanic community know they have a voice. As we're more accepting, they'll feel like they can be involved."

Open Sundays: The declining growth, demographic shifts and changing landscape are giving Provo a new look and feel, but there is no arguing that the heart of the city has not veered too far from its conservative roots.

"At heart, we're still small-town folks," says Community Development Director Gary McGinn. It's no surprise Provo last year was named the most conservative city in the nation by The Bay Area Center for Voting Research.

Nary a Democrat holds elective office in the city. In fact, well-connected Republican incumbent Lewis Billings trounced Dave Bailey in last fall's nonpartisan mayoral race after a last-minute campaign flier attempted to tie the challenger to area Democrats.

The Rev. Dean Jackson of the Rock Canyon Church doesn't understand why some outsiders consider this conservatism a bad thing.

"If you want to find someone uptight and strange, you'll find them [here]," Jackson says. "But if you want to find someone with world perspective, you'll find them, too."

Yet Jackson is seeing subtle changes in the environment that indicates the dominant, conservative population is loosening its grip - ever so slightly. After all, congregations in various denominations are growing and, perhaps the most telling, many restaurants are now open on Sunday - something generally unheard of a decade ago.

"You'd be surprised how many people are at the Provo Towne Mall on a Sunday," he says.

"I've always thought that the perception of Provo [as an exclusive, conservative bastion] was out of date," says BYU spokesman Michael Smart. "People outside Utah County neglect to acknowledge the variety of people here."

As evidence, Smart cites BYU faculty members, with doctorates from schools such as Harvard, Stanford, Yale and the University of California at Berkeley, and the fact that only a quarter of the 30,000 BYU students are from Utah.

Smart recalls Los Angeles Times reporter David Lamb coming to Provo to cover the 2002 Winter Olympics and calling BYU "one of the most cosmopolitan campuses in the country."

Linda Walton, president of The Walton Group, a marketing and public-relations company, has seen the physical and social changes since coming to the Provo area in 1962.

But, she says, she wants those who bash the area immediately south of Utah's capital to back off.

"There is always the county or the city that everyone makes fun of - they're kind of the scapegoat," she says. "For other people in the state to make fun of us is just childish."

thollingshead@sltrib.com

Tribune reporter Mark Eddington contributed to this report.