St. George is a city located in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Utah on the Utah-Arizona border, near the tri-state junction of Utah, Nevada and Arizona. It is the county seat of Washington County, Utah and is the principal city of the St. George Metropolitan Statistical Area. The city lies in the northeastern-most part of the Mojave Desert adjacent to the Pine Valley Mountains; it's also at the convergence of three distinct geological areas: the Mojave Desert, Colorado Plateau, and Great Basin. The city is 118 miles northeast of Las Vegas and 300 miles south-southwest of Salt Lake City on Interstate 15. The city is named after George A. Smith, a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Apostle.As of the 2015 U.S Census estimates, St. George had a population of 80,202, and the metropolitan area, defined as Washington County, had an estimated population of 155,600. St. George is the seventh-largest city in Utah and the most populous city in the state outside of the Wasatch Front. The city has become well known merely for its rapid growth, among other aspects, consistently ranking as one of the fastest growing cities in the country for several decades. In 2005, St. George was ranked the second fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States, beat only by Greeley, Colorado, this trend continued through 2010, when growth slowed substantially due to the economic recession. Today however, growth trends have once again increased at a steady pace, ranking St. George as the fifth fastest-growing metropolitan area in the United States.