Jack Guthrie began Skydive Utah in the early 1980s. Below, Jack humbly describes his business experience in building Skydive Utah into an amazing full service skydiving center:

When I was 35 (1981) I traveled several Mountain states with parachutes and taught static line skydiving. I call it my “barnstorming” period.

I was 37 when I essentially took over Cedar Valley Free Fall. Nobody else wanted to run a drop zone. This was on the Cedar Valley Airport in what is now Eagle Mountain. I changed the name to Skydive Utah, followed by Skydive U and finally back to Skydive Utah. That is a story in itself. I was there for 20 years.

I began the dropzone with several static line rigs (military 35 ft. canopies with chest mounted reserves), one student freefall rig and one leased Cessna 182. I soon obtained one more 182 and leased a third. I eventually purchased that third 182. I think the next aircraft upgrade was a Beechcraft Twin Bonanza. The engines quickly self destructed. I replaced it with a Beechcraft D-18. I used that for years and traded it for another Beechcraft Twin Bonanza. I leased a DC-3 for approximately 5 years. Two of these years were at Cedar Valley and three seasons from 2003 to 2005 at Tooele. I then bought my first King Air (N32229) used at Tooele for the seasons 2006 through 2011 (I am guessing). It gave up the ghost and I then acquired the next King Air N6KZ.

I am not a pioneer of the sport. However, when I began my career the market we see today was non-existent. I believe I am one of the DZOs that built the market we have today. This was mostly due to being in the right place at the right time and not wanting to do anything else for a living. By the way, I believe I was one of the first drop zones in the U.S. to put square parachutes on students.

There you have it.

(Jack) John T. Guthrie, Jr.