Matheson also came to oppose the deployment of the MX missile system in Utah, though he was initially in favor of it; opposed the transportation of weteye nerve gas from Colorado to Utah's Tooele Army Depot; supported the Central Utah Project; and initiated "Project Bold," a proposal for land exchanges between the federal and state governments. While governor he was active in the National Governors' Conference, served on the federal government's Intergovernmental Task Force on Water Policy, and was chair of both the Four Corners Regional Commission and the Western Governors' Policy Office. Scott Matheson died of cancer on 7 October 1990.

See: Robert Gottlieb and Peter Wiley, Empires in the Sun: The Rise of the New American West (1982); Scott M. Matheson with James Edwin Kee, Out of Balance (1986).

John McCormick