Year-end review: Utah's most memorable stories of 2011

SALT LAKE CITY — As we approach the end of 2011, KSL News takes a look back at this year's top 10 most memorable Utah stories.

 

1. Who can forget the year of the Jimmer? Following a stellar senior season playing basketball for BYU — and garnering hundreds of thousands of fans along the way — Jimmer Fredette went on to win college basketball player of the year and was taken in the 1st round of the NBA draft by the Sacramento Kings.
2. But not even Jimmer ever accomplished what a group of young ladies from Farmington did in May, all thanks to an outbreak of horse herpes. Rodeo queen contestants had to ride stick poniesduring a rodeo because the virus was making the real horses sick. Their story made international headlines.
3. Speaking of animals, thousands of birds came down in Cedar City in early December.
4. And hundreds of pigs were burned in a barn fire in Beaver County in November.
5. Then there was the eagle hurt in a car accident that was sent back into the wild in San Juan County last April. The man who let her go was Brody Young — the Utah park ranger who was shot several times near Moab, and is now back to work.
6. A group of Logan bystanders showed amazing strength in September when they lifted a car off of a motorcyclist who was hit and pinned underneath it. Surveillance video captured them pulling 21-year-old Brandon Wright out from underneath the burning vehicle.
7. There were other amazing rescues, for example that of two men who got lost and ran out of gas while snowmobiling in Wasatch County in March. They built a snow cave and lived there for a couple of days until search and rescue teams eventually found them.
8. A missing 12-year-old Boy Scout also built a shelter when he got lost in Daggett County in August.He was found safe the next day.
9. Lehi Police Chief Chad Smith saved a 3-year-old boy from drowning in a swimming pool in July. Smith did CPR and made a lifelong friend.
10. And who can forget Dale Price? He's the American Fork dad who dressed up in a different costume every morning to wave goodbye to his son as he boarded his school bus? His story made headlines across the world.