Years before he would become America’s celebrated leading man, Robert Redford made an unusual decision, by moving away from Los Angeles just as his acting career was showing promise. He decamped to an arrestingly beautiful but remote canyon in Utah, where he bought two acres of land from a sheepherder for $500.

While other aspiring actors congregated on the coasts, in New York or Hollywood, Mr. Redford, in his mid-20s, built a home so isolated that for many months of the year, deep snowpack made it inaccessible by car.

Mr. Redford, 89, died on that property on Tuesday, in the canyon north of Provo that he adored.

“He loved the beauty of the place, and it fired his creativity,” said Stephen Minton, a neonatal doctor who lives near Mr. Redford’s Utah home and was his friend for 45 years. “He wasn’t a movie star to us. He was a neighbor. He was Bob.”

Over the decades, Mr. Redford bought thousands more acres in the canyon, as well as a small ski resort that he named Sundance after his role in the classic 1969 movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” The resort hosted the first iterations of the Sundance Film Festival, which would grow into an international cinematic juggernaut.

Mr. Redford’s death put a spotlight on the far-reaching consequences of his love for his patch of land, cocooned in aspen, maple and pine forests and framed by the imposing stone peaks of 11,700-foot Mount Timpanogos.