All About Robert Redford’s Deep Connection to Utah, Where He Died in ‘the Place He Loved’

From shaping the film industry to fighting for environmental change, Robert Redford saw Utah as more than just a home base for the last 60 years. 

On Tuesday, Sept. 16, the Oscar-winning actor, director and environmental activist died at his home outside of Provo, Utah, at age 89.

In a statement shared with PEOPLE, Cindi Berger, chairman and CEO of Rogers & Cowan PMK, said Redford “passed away at his home at Sundance in the mountains of Utah — the place he loved, surrounded by those he loved.”

Redford — who was born in Santa Monica, Calif., and grew up in the Van Nuys neighborhood of Los Angeles — had been passionate about his deep connection to Utah in the past, and how he found it to be a serene escape from Hollywood.   

The actor first put down roots in Utah three years after marrying his first wife, Lola Van Wagenen. 

He and his then-wife, who was originally from Utah, had purchased two acres of land in Provo Canyon in 1961, according to The New York Times. The couple welcomed four children together: Scott (who died just two months after his birth in 1959 from sudden infant death syndrome), Shauna, James and Amy. (James died of cancer in 2020 at age 58.)

Per The Times, Redford felt strongly that Utah life was a better fit for him than L.A., which he often said was “phony and superficial.”

In 1978, he told Rocky Mountain Magazine that Utah is “not trying to pretend to be something it’s not,” The Times reported. “It doesn’t invite you in and then kick you in the shins.”

Nearly three decades later, he told The Salt Lake Tribune in 2005 that his feelings towards Hollywood hadn’t changed: “I grew up in Los Angeles, near Hollywood, so there was no magic for me about Hollywood.” 

Redford’s growing connection to Utah led him to purchase the Timp Haven ski resort in 1969, located in the the snow-capped Wasatch Mountains of Sundance, Utah. He later renamed the property Sundance Mountain Resort after his famous character from the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. 

According to the resort’s website, Redford wanted “to develop a little and preserve a great deal” of the property, as opposed to investors who were eyeing it to construct a string of condominiums at the time. “Redford saw his newly acquired land as an ideal locale for environmental conservation and artistic experimentation,” the website adds.

After more than 50 years of ownership, the actor sold the property in 2020 to Broadreach Capital Partners and Cedar Capital Partners, per The Salt Lake Tribune. His decision to sell was due to the property creating “a lot of weight for me to be carrying around,” he told the outlet at the time. 

It was at the resort where he founded his culture-defining nonprofit, the Sundance Institute, which is “dedicated to the discovery and development of independent artists and audiences,” per its mission statement. 

Later on in 1978, Redford joined forces with the Utah State Film Commission to promote what was then called the Utah/US Film Festival. The event – which was rebranded as the Sundance Film Festival in 1991 – is now considered to be the largest independent film festival in the U.S. and generates millions in direct investments each year.

During an interview with PEOPLE in 2005, Redford said of the Utah-based festival: “It means a lot to me. I’ve devoted so much of my life to it.”

Along with Sundance, Redford later experienced another milestone at his Utah mountain resort. 

Years after he and Van Wagenen divorced in 1985, Redford met his second wife Sibylle Szaggars, a German visual artist and environmental activist, while she was on a ski trip at the resort in 1996. The pair later tied the knot in an intimate ceremony in Szaggars’ hometown of Hamburg, Germany, in July 2009.

The same year he met Szaggars, he purchased his 30-acre horse ranch in Charleston, Utah, that he named after his 1998 movie The Horse Whisperer. While Redford initially intended for Horse Whisperer Ranch to be a place where his horses could roam free, it ended up being a home he and his wife enjoyed together as a family. 

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After listing the property for sale in June 2021, Redford told The Wall Street Journal that he and his family wanted to focus their attention on their Provo Canyon ranch. 

“For the last 25 years, my family and I have loved and embraced this ranch as a base for our horse program, running clinics and serving as a home for our many beloved horses,” he told the outlet at the time. “Looking ahead, we want to focus on expanding the facilities at our ranch located at Sundance in nearby Provo Canyon.”