The 2018 Miss Utah USA competition is the pageant who selects the representative for the state of Utah in the Miss USA pageant.
Utah has been quite successful at Miss USA, with 20 placements as of 2009. Their most consistent period was in the 1950s and 1960s. Utah has produced one Miss USA in 1960 (Linda Bement, who went on to win the Miss Universe 1960 title). Miss Utah USA 1957, Charlotte Sheffield, also won the Miss USA 1957 crown after the original titleholder (Leona Gage of Maryland) was dethroned. Utah has a strong recent record, having placed in four out of five pageants between 2005 and 2009.
Britt Boyse, the Executive Director of Casting Crowns Productions, is currently the director for Miss Utah USA and Miss Utah Teen USA along with Miss Arizona USA and Miss Arizona Teen USA.
Every year, each state holds a preliminary competition to choose their delegate for the Miss USA pageant. In some states (such as Texas and Florida), local pageants are also held to determine delegates for the state competition. The state winners hold the title "Miss State USA" for the year of their reign.
The most successful state is Texas, which has had the most semi-finalists and winners, including five consecutive Miss USA titleholders during the 1980s.[22] Other successful states include California, New York, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia. The least successful states are Delaware, placing only once in 2015; Montana, which has not placed since the 1950s; South Dakota, which has only placed three times (the last time in 2016), and Wyoming, which gained only its second placement in 2010. The only state which has produced more than one Miss Universe is South Carolina.
The Miss Universe Organization licenses out the state pageants to pageant directors, who in some cases are responsible for more than one state. The most well established directorial groups are RPM Productions, created in 1980 (Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, South Carolina), and Vanbros, created in the early 1990s (Arkansas, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and Oklahoma). Future Productions direct the most states, seven, across the Midwest and Rockies.