Kentucky Blue Grass (KBG) is probably the dominant grass used in lawns in the Salt Lake Valley, so that is probably the grass you have now. It can deal with drought by going dormant, but as hot and dry as it has been lately, if it didn't get any water for three weeks, it may have died (part of my lawn died when a sprinkler head stopped rotating right after I did my monthly inspection).

You could try to water it and see if it comes back, but you might be better off reseeding.

If you want a lawn that will stay green without any additional water, you have pretty limited choices.

Buffalo grass or a mixture of buffalo grass and blue grama will stay green without additional water (you may need to water once or twice in a year like this year). They're a little different color than what you're used to seeing. Buffalo grass is sort of gray green and grama is sort of blue green.

The grama is a bunch grass and the buffalo grass spreads (and fills in) by stolons (above ground runners like a strawberry plant has).

If you want a really soft lawn, you'll want to get a buffalo grass like legacy, that you can plant from plugs (no seeds that way--buffalo grass has prickly seeds). Buffalo grass isn't cheap, though, especially not from sod. Blue grama is pretty easy to get started, but it's tough to spread the seeds (they're like dust and often have a lot of chaff with them).

In Orem, a buffalo grass lawn will probably not start to turn green until sometime in May and will probably start to turn brown in September. You might get a week or two more of green on either end than I would, so maybe early May to late September/early October. But it will definitely turn brown earlier in the fall than your current lawn and will definitely stay brown later in the spring. The grama will be green a little earlier in the spring and a little later in the fall than the buffalo grass.

Two cool season grasses that will stay green with no water (may need a little in a year like this) are western wheatgrass and sheep fescue. I think Arizona fescue and Idaho Fescue will also stay green. western wheatgrass can be difficult to get started initially, but it spreads aggressively once it gets started. The fescues are all bunch grasses. Streambank wheatgrass and crested wheatgrass will stay alive with no additional water, but they'll go dormant once the rains stop and will green up again in the fall. Streambank wheatgrass spreads via rhizomes like western wheatgrass. Older varieties of Crested wheatgrass are bunch grasses but newer varieties like Roadcrest and Ephraim are mildly rhizomatous. Crested wheatgrass was introduced from Russia, and the others are all native.

For buffalo grass and grama, you're probably too late to seed. Those should be seeded in late spring or early summer. I seeded a little grama a couple of weeks ago, but I was already cutting it close.

The other grasses can be planted in the fall. If you haven't planted by September 15, I think I'd wait until early winter and dormant seed (seed when it's too cold for them to sprout and they'll germinate in the spring as soon as conditions are right).

You'll have best results with any of these if you kill your existing lawn first. For the buffalo grass and grama, it's probably necessary. I'm assuming the water in the spot that died from too much water is from your watering, right? The reason I ask is that none of these grasses deal very well with too much water. They can generally deal with spring flooding, but if you water them like a KBG lawn, they'll die.

The wheatgrasses and sheep fescue are less expensive than buffalo grass, but they're still a little pricy (although maybe not compared with the elite KBG seeds many people here buy).

I can provide links to some places that sell the various seeds if you're interested.

Thank you so much for this excellent post. I read it immediately but haven't had the gumption to respond yet.

yes, the Wheatgrass is expensive, but not brutally so.

And the good news is that I just bought a multimeter and tested my sprinkler system, and it looks like my controller transformer is dead. So hopefully I will get the sprinklers working and start overseeding with the seed you recommended. I think I saw sources in your other posts. Thanks!