They brought a wicker basket and blanket and wore dead corsages from the spring formal the weekend before. She was drawn to the piece as a visual representation of a whole world waiting to be explored.Īs a teenager in 1989, she and a friend took their dates to the airport for a picnic on the world map. When it’s reinstalled, the map will have some space to shift around to avoid cracking in the event of an earthquake.Īmong those eager for the artwork’s grand return is Tanya Robinson, who carries fond memories of traveling as a young girl and looking at the map to see how far her destination was from Salt Lake City. Travelers will get a chance to reunite with the piece in the B concourse plaza when that area opens in fall 2024. (Trent Nelson | The Salt Lake Tribune) The world map from the old Salt Lake City International Airport sits in storage on Monday, April 18, 2022. “When it got down to sawing it into pieces, it’s a little like trying to touch up the ‘Mona Lisa,’” he said.

The process, Wyatt said, created tension. That gave workers the ability to saw it into pieces and extract it for reassembly in the new airport. When workers installed the map in 1961, they laid a fabric mat to create a barrier between the artwork and the slab below. “They did a core sample,” he said, “and about 3 inches down, the little terrazzo, almost like a hockey puck, popped out right away.” When the old airport shut down, Wyatt had a contractor take a closer look at what was below the surface of the terrazzo map. Before determining the piece could be salvaged, the airport had high-resolution photos taken to re-create it in a window of the new airport’s greeting area. Officials thought the terrazzo was affixed to a 2-foot slab of concrete, making it too heavy to maneuver without damaging it.

It didn’t always look like the map was going to make the trip to the new airport. It has been disassembled and will be reinstalled in the new airport. (Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The large map of the world on the floor of Terminal 1 at the old Salt Lake City International Airport in 2012.

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