Biohazard Cleanup Near Downtown Moab Moab, UT

Moab is the largest city in and the county seat of Grand County in eastern Utah.

The 2020 census counted 5,366 residents in 2,235 households in Moab, and the median age was 37.6 years.

Residents named the town Moab in 1880, and the name is believed to come either from the biblical 'far country' or from the Paiute word moapa, meaning 'mosquito'.

Latter-day Saint settlers tried to establish the Elk Mountain Mission trading fort at the Colorado River crossing in April 1855 but abandoned it after repeated attacks, and the fort was resettled in 1877 by mixed-race cowboy William Grandstaff, Moab's first successful non-indigenous settler.

A new group of settlers from Rich County, led by Randolph Hockaday Stewart, arrived in 1878, and Moab was incorporated as a town on December 30, 1902.

In the 1950s Moab became known as the Uranium Capital of the World after geologist Charles Steen found a rich uranium deposit south of the city, and its population grew nearly 500 percent to near 6,000.

With the winding down of the Cold War the uranium boom ended and Moab's population fell sharply, to 3,971 by 1990.

Moab is a gateway to Arches National Park, whose entrance is 4 miles north of the city on U.S. Route 191, and to Canyonlands National Park, and it draws tourists, mountain bikers on the Slickrock Trail, and off-roaders for the annual Moab Jeep Safari.

The Moab to Monument Valley Film Commission, established in 1949, is the longest-running film commission in the world, and films shot near Moab include Wagon Master (1950) and Thelma and Louise (1990).

In 1943 a former Civilian Conservation Corps camp outside Moab was used as the Moab Isolation Center for Japanese American internees labeled 'troublemakers', and the site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1994.