Cache County · County profile
Cache County, Utah.
A high valley with four real seasons, snowy winters, and a wall of mountains on every side. Cache County is the university town of Logan at its middle, a dozen smaller towns strung down the valley floor, and homes that still run below the Wasatch Front medians. I am Scott Buehler, a Utah resident of more than twenty years and licensed in both real estate and mortgage lending, and this page gives you the valley the way a local would: what it costs to live here, how the county gets around, and what a Saturday holds in each of its towns.
Cache County is Cache Valley, one of the few places in Utah that reads as a single bowl of land. The Bear River Range walls it in on the east, the Wellsville Mountains on the west, and a dozen towns sit on the floor between them, running north and south from Logan without a real gap. The county holds 145,000 people on ~1,165 sq mi of high, cold mountain country, which makes it the largest population center in Utah north of the Wasatch Front, and Logan sits at the middle of it at ~4,500 ft, valley floor, the seat and the only town that acts like a small city.
The fact that explains the whole valley is the university. Utah State University sits on the bench above Logan and reaches into nearly every part of county life: it is the largest employer, the reason the valley holds a downtown theater and a real concert calendar, the anchor of the rental market, and the source of the Aggie identity that runs through all twelve towns. The second fact is the mountains. They close the bowl in on every side, which is why Cache has no interstate of its own, why its winters are colder than the Wasatch Front with January lows near ~18 °F, and why its growth since the 2020 count, +8.9%, has been steady rather than frantic: there is only so much buildable floor between the walls, and most of the rest is working farmland.
The page below is the county in one place: the at-a-glance table, the twelve towns largest first, what a budget buys on the floor and up the bench, how a valley without an interstate moves, and the weekend, town by town, in a place where Logan Canyon and the climb to Bear Lake are part of ordinary life. It is written in my voice, but here I am the connector, not the local agent: I have known Utah's market for more than two decades, and when you are ready to tour, I pass you to a partner agent who works Cache County week after week.
In one line
A college town and a farm basin sharing one cold valley
At a glance
Cache County at a glance.
The same thirty rows every county page on this site carries, so any two counties can be set side by side without the numbers changing between pages.
| Category | Cache County |
|---|---|
| Size and growth | |
| County seat | Logan |
| Population | 145,000 |
| Rank among Utah counties | #6 of 29 |
| Growth since 2020 | +8.9% (11,842 people) |
| 2026 outlook | 147,368 |
| Land area | ~1,165 sq mi |
| People per square mile | ~124 per sq mi |
| Climate and land | |
| Elevation at the seat | ~4,500 ft, valley floor |
| Climate | Four seasons, cold valley winters, snow, winter inversions |
| Typical July high | ~89 °F |
| Typical January low | ~18 °F |
| Federal land | 38% federal |
| Private land | 57% private |
| Cost | |
| Median home value | ~$444,400 |
| Median household income | ~$81,700 |
| Property tax | ~0.4% effective on a primary home |
| Combined sales tax at the seat | ~7.30% |
| Getting around | |
| Interstates | None in the county; I-15 ~30 min west |
| Transit | Cache Valley Transit District bus (fare-free); no rail |
| Nearest commercial airport | Logan-Cache Airport (LGU), general aviation; SLC ~1 hr 25 min |
| Drive to Salt Lake City airport | ~1 hr 25 min from Logan |
| Schools and services | |
| School districts | Logan City School District, Cache County School District |
| Colleges and universities | Utah State University, Bridgerland Technical College |
| Hospitals | Logan Regional Hospital, Cache Valley Hospital (Logan) |
| Largest employers | Utah State University, Cache County School District, Logan Regional Hospital, Schreiber Foods (Logan), Pepperidge Farm (Richmond) |
| Outdoors | |
| National parks and monuments | None in the county; Golden Spike National Historical Park ~1 hr |
| State parks | Hyrum State Park |
| Ski areas | Beaver Mountain, Cherry Peak |
| On MovingUtah | |
| City guides | 12 city guides |
| Ranked things-to-do lists | 12 ranked lists across 12 towns |
Population: Census Bureau county population estimates, Vintage 2025 (July 1, 2025). Growth measured from the April 1, 2020 estimates base in the same Census table. 2026 outlook: a straight-line outlook from the 2020 to 2025 Census trend (the Census Bureau does not project county totals). Home values and income: American Community Survey 2020-2024 5-year, county medians. Sales tax: Utah State Tax Commission, combined rate at the county seat, first quarter 2026. Federal and private land: Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute, Utah Land Ownership, July 2025. Figures checked September 2026 and rounded; the population figures are exact.
Where the people are
Twelve towns in one mountain bowl, Logan at the middle.
The seat and the biggest towns
Logan is the seat, the largest town, and the center of nearly everything, holding about a third of the county's people. The university campus climbs the bench east of downtown, the Logan River runs through town out of the canyon, and the older grid between the campus and the river holds the county's lowest prices and much of its rental housing. It is the only town in the county with a real downtown, a theater, the hospital, and the airport.
North of Logan the valley narrows and the towns climb the bench under the Bear River Range: North Logan, Hyde Park, and Smithfield, the biggest of the northern towns, with Richmond and Lewiston beyond them in the flat dairy ground that runs toward the Idaho line. These are the bench towns where the county's higher prices and its newer streets sit, North Logan especially, and the ones closest to the snow and the summer cool of the range.
South of Logan the same chain runs down the floor: Providence and River Heights on the bench above the river, Millville and Nibley on the ground below them, Hyrum over toward the reservoir and the west side, and Wellsville at the foot of the Wellsville Mountains, the narrow ridge that forms the valley's west wall. Providence, Nibley, and Millville have been the county's fastest-growing strip, and their newer subdivisions are where most of the new rooftops in Cache have gone up.
Every city guide in the county
Each of the twelve has a full guide on this site: what the town is like, what it costs, its listings, its price pages, and its neighborhoods. Largest first.
How the county grows now
- The south bench. Providence, Nibley, and Millville, the strip below Logan where the newest subdivisions keep filling in.
- The north bench. North Logan and Hyde Park, climbing under the Bear River Range closest to the canyon road and the ski hill.
- The university. Utah State keeps the county's economy steadier than its size would suggest, and the campus anchors the middle of the valley.
- The outlook. A straight line through the 2020 count and the 2025 estimate puts the county near 147,368 in 2026, steady growth for a bowl with no interstate to sprawl along.
New homes, where they still exist
What a budget buys
What your money buys in Cache, on the floor and up the bench.
Home values
The county median is ~$444,400, and like every mountain valley on this site the county figure hides the real spread, which runs with elevation and age. The money climbs toward the mountains. On the east bench, North Logan, Hyde Park, and the south-valley bench towns run above the county line, because those are the streets with the canyon views, the newer builds, and the cooler summer nights. Down on the older floor, the Logan grid and the farm towns sit under it, and that is where a first purchase in Cache County most often happens.
The price pages show it street by street. Under half a million is a real search across most of the valley: Logan under $500K, North Logan under $500K, and Smithfield under $500K. The middle of the market, where the county's newer homes and its bench lots land, shows in Hyrum under $600K and Providence under $750K. And the top sits on the bench and the newest south-valley ground, North Logan over $750K and Hyde Park over $1M among them.
What a Cache home actually is depends on which part of the valley you buy in. The Logan grid holds the county's oldest housing, early brick homes and mid-century frames with a stretch of rentals near campus; the bench towns hold the 1980s through 2000s two-stories that make up most of the resale stock; and the south valley holds the newest construction. Buyers coming from newer markets should read the basement-home and single-story pages before they shop, because older Cache homes carry basements that change how a square-foot number reads, and much of the newer building has gone two-story on slab.
Taxes in this county
Property tax here runs lower than almost anywhere on the Wasatch Front, ~0.4% effective on a primary home, under Utah's rule that taxes a primary residence on a share of its market value. What actually lands on your bill is set by the city and the school district you are in, not by the county line, so the two districts and an occasional bond can move the number a few tenths from town to town. Check the exact rate for an address on the county assessor's site before you write an offer.
The combined sales tax at the register is ~7.30% in Logan, in the middle of the county seats on this site and a shade under the Wasatch Front cities. Net, Cache is a tax-light corner of Utah: the property side is among the lowest of the state's populated counties and the sales side is ordinary. For the full picture of what the county costs beyond the house, the cost-of-living guide lays the state out by region, and the affordability calculator turns the county median into a budget you can plan around.
Listings, largest markets first
Run the numbers
- Affordability calculatorWhat the Cache median means for a monthly budget.
- Conventional mortgage calculatorA full payment breakdown with the Utah tax and insurance lines.
- Rent vs buyWorth running in Logan, where the rental market is deep.
- Every calculator in one place
Getting around
No interstate, no rail, and the valley still moves.
Interstates and transit
Cache is the only large county on this site with no interstate inside its borders, and that fact shapes the whole valley's commute. I-15 runs about half an hour to the west, reached from Logan by two-lane road, most often over Sardine Canyon on US-89 and US-91 to Brigham City. Inside the county the roads that matter are the state routes that run the length of the valley, the bench streets that climb toward the range on the east, and US-89 leaving town to the northeast, which is the road up Logan Canyon and, over the summit, down to Bear Lake. There are no freeways and no wide shortcuts; you drive the valley the way the valley is shaped.
Inside the bowl the buses are the surprise. The Cache Valley Transit District runs a fare-free bus network covering Logan and the towns around it, and it is one of the few genuinely useful transit systems in rural Utah, built for the students and the workers who move through Logan every day. There is no passenger rail, and the valley's snowy winters make a car the realistic choice for most households, but for a commute into town or a ride to campus the bus works and it costs nothing.
The airport and the drive
For air travel, Logan-Cache Airport is a general-aviation field with no commercial service, so the real gateway is Salt Lake City International, ~1 hr 25 min from Logan to the terminal. Most Cache households make that drive a handful of times a year rather than every week, and it is the quiet cost of the valley's self-containment: everything you need day to day is inside the bowl, and everything that is not, from an international flight to a major concert, is an hour and a half or more down the road.
Drive times, off-peak
- Logan to the freeway
- About half an hour west to I-15; Cache Valley has no interstate of its own, so the freeway is a drive, not an on-ramp.
- Logan to the Salt Lake airport
- ~1 hr 25 min from Logan to Salt Lake City International.
- Logan to Ogden
- About an hour, down US-89 and US-91 through Sardine Canyon and then south on I-15.
- Valley towns into Logan
- About ten to fifteen minutes from Smithfield, Providence, or Nibley on the valley floor.
- Logan to Brigham City
- About thirty minutes over Sardine Canyon on US-89 and US-91.
Things to do
A Saturday in Cache Valley, from the campus to the summit.
On The Local, Cache's towns are covered town by town, and the coverage is honest about depth: Logan's ranked list runs fifteen deep, the middle towns carry numbered lists of five to ten, and a few, Providence, Hyde Park, and River Heights, are written up as the best things to do without a number attached. Read them together and a Cache Saturday comes into focus: a cone at the Utah State creamery, a walk up the Logan River Trail to First Dam, and a drive up the canyon for whatever the season offers. Largest town first.
Region reads
The county-wide pages that no single town owns.
- Logan Canyon, the dams to the summit
- Beaver Mountain and Cherry Peak, Cache Valley on snow
- Bear Lake, over the summit
- Utah State and Aggie country
- Cache Valley farm country, dairy and cheese
- The Wellsville Mountains, the valley's west wall
The honest read
The honest read is that Cache's weekend bench is deep for a valley its size, and it points two ways at once: toward the campus and downtown Logan for a university-town Saturday of Aggie games, the theater, and the creamery, and toward Logan Canyon for the river, Beaver Mountain and Cherry Peak in winter, and the climb over the summit to Bear Lake in summer. What the county does not offer is a quick way out of itself; the mountains that make the bench also close it in, and a January inversion or a snowy evening over Sardine Canyon is the trade. Most people who live here accept it, because the valley keeps the things they do week to week inside the bowl.
Schools and services
Two districts, one university, and the hospitals in Logan.
School districts
The county runs two school districts: Logan City School District, Cache County School District. Logan City School District serves the city itself, and Cache County School District covers every town around it, so two homes a few miles apart can feed different systems; the city guide for any address names its district. I do not rate schools, here or anywhere on this site: I state the district, link the facts, and leave the judgment to you and the district's own published data.
Colleges and hospitals
The university is the county's great institutional difference. Utah State University, Bridgerland Technical College, with Utah State's main campus on the bench above Logan, one of the larger universities in the state and the anchor of the valley's economy, its venues, its sports, and its housing market. Bridgerland Technical College sits nearby and covers the trades. Between the two, Logan draws students and the jobs that follow them from across the northern part of the state, and the county's hospital care comes from Logan Regional Hospital, Cache Valley Hospital (Logan), both of them in Logan.
Largest employers, by the state's list: Utah State University, Cache County School District, Logan Regional Hospital, Schreiber Foods (Logan), Pepperidge Farm (Richmond). Read that list and you see the county's shape: the university and the two school districts at the center, the hospital behind them, and then the food industry, with Schreiber Foods' cheese plant in Logan and the Pepperidge Farm bakery up in Richmond. Those two plants are the reminder that the dairy ground on the valley floor is still working farmland, and the rural-living guide covers what a farm-country address really asks of you.
Guides for this move
- Relocating to Utah, an orientationThe regions, the timing, and the paperwork.
- First-time buyers in UtahFrom pre-approval to keys, in order.
- Rural living in UtahWhat a farm-country or bench-edge address really asks of you.
- Living next to agriculture in UtahThe dairy ground is still working; know what your neighbors do.
- How to choose a neighborhood when you move upCampus, bench, or farm floor, the valley's three neighborhoods differ more than their miles.
Compare it
Cache County against its neighbors.
The full side-by-side pages built so far for this county. The matchup tool on the county hub builds any other pair, and routes you here if the pair is not built yet.
Any two counties
The county matchup tool
Pick Cache County and any other county on this site, and the same thirty rows appear side by side for both.
Build a matchupCity vs city
Compare the county's cities
Logan has been put head to head with Ogden, Provo, Salt Lake City, and the state's other big markets on the compare tool.
Compare citiesAlready own here?
What a home in Cache County is worth
A value built by hand from real Cache Valley sales, not an algorithm, and a path to get featured where buyers are already looking.
Start the valuationCommon questions
Cache County, answered.
What cities are in Cache County?
Twelve with full guides on this site, largest first: Logan, North Logan, Smithfield, Hyrum, Providence, Nibley, Hyde Park, Wellsville, Richmond, Millville, River Heights, and Lewiston. Logan is the seat and the largest, holding about a third of the county's people. The rest run north and south from it down the valley floor, close enough together that most of the boundaries between them are a formality on the map.
Where are the least expensive homes in Cache County?
Down in the older part of Logan's grid, around the university and the river, and in the farm towns farthest from the bench. The county median is ~$444,400, and the streets under it are mostly the pre-war and mid-century homes in Logan itself plus the older stock in towns like Richmond and Lewiston in the dairy ground to the north. The trade is age and distance from the canyon: the bench towns run higher, and the newest south-valley subdivisions higher still.
How far is Cache County from Salt Lake City?
Cache is the far north, and it feels it. The drive to Salt Lake City International is ~1 hr 25 min from Logan, and the county has no interstate of its own, so the first half hour of any trip south is a two-lane road to I-15. For a household whose work and life stay in the valley, the distance barely registers; for anyone commuting to the Wasatch Front it would be the whole story. Most people who live in Cache also work in Cache.
Is Cache County still growing?
Steadily, not frantically. The Census Bureau puts the county at 145,000 in July 2025, up +8.9% from the 2020 count, a gain of 11,842 people. The new rooftops are going in on the south bench around Providence, Nibley, and Millville and on the bench towns north of Logan, because the valley is closed in by mountains and most of the open ground is still working farmland. A straight-line outlook puts the county near 147,368 in 2026.
What is there to do in Cache County on a weekend?
A valley Saturday usually starts at the university or the river and ends in the canyon. Utah State's campus, the creamery, the downtown theater, and Aggie sports make up the town side, and the Logan River Trail, First Dam, the two ski hills, and the drive up Logan Canyon toward Bear Lake make up the mountain side. On The Local, Logan is ranked fifteen deep and the other towns are covered each in their own list, so a Cache weekend can be planned town by town. The one thing the valley does not offer is a short trip out of it.
Next step
Thinking about Cache Valley? Let's find your town.
Tell me where the work is, what the budget looks like, and whether you want the bench, the campus grid, or the farm ground. I will give you the honest read on which part of the valley fits, and connect you with the partner agent who works Cache County every week.
If you buy or sell outside Southern Utah, I connect you with a trusted local partner agent and stay involved through your move. If you work with that agent, their brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. It comes out of the agent's compensation, not as an added cost to you, and you are always free to choose your own agent.