Salt Lake County, Utah.

The seat and the biggest towns

Salt Lake City is the seat and the largest city, about a sixth of the county, sitting at the north end where the valley meets the foothills. Downtown, the Avenues, Sugar House, and the east bench under the University of Utah are the parts of the county with the oldest housing and the strongest street life. West Valley City is second, the big working city on the west side of I-15 with the county's most approachable prices, and West Jordan is third, the anchor of the southwest.

From there the county runs south in two columns. On the east, the bench cities under the Wasatch: Millcreek, Holladay, Cottonwood Heights, Sandy, and Draper, each a step closer to the canyons and a step up in price. On the west, the valley-floor and Oquirrh-side cities: Taylorsville, Kearns, Magna, South Jordan with the big Daybreak development, Riverton, Herriman climbing the Oquirrh bench, and Bluffdale at the Point of the Mountain. Down the middle, along the rail lines, Murray, Midvale, and South Salt Lake are the older mid-valley towns that TRAX has been quietly rebuilding.

The lines between them matter less than you would think. Most run down the middle of a street, the school districts ignore them, and the county provides the library, the health department, and the recorder for all eighteen. What the city does change is the property tax stack and the feel of the streets: Holladay and Millcreek read as old east-bench neighborhoods, Herriman and Daybreak read as new, and Murray and Midvale read as the small towns they were before the valley grew around them.

Every city guide in the county

Each of the eighteen has a full guide on this site: what it is like, what it costs, its listings, its price pages, and its communities. Largest first.

Interstates and transit

Three interstates cross the county: I-15, I-80, I-215. I-15 runs the length of the valley and is the road every commute eventually touches; I-80 crosses it east to west, from Parleys Canyon and Park City to the airport and the salt flats; and I-215 is the belt route that lets the east bench and the west side reach each other without going through downtown. The freeways are wide and mostly finished, and the daily slow spots are predictable: the I-15 core through downtown in both rushes, and the Point of the Mountain at the south end, where Utah County's commuters pour in.

The transit is what sets this county apart from every other in the state. TRAX light rail (three lines), S-Line streetcar, FrontRunner, UTA bus. TRAX reaches downtown, the University of Utah, the airport, Murray, Midvale, Sandy, Draper, West Jordan, South Jordan, and Daybreak; FrontRunner runs north to Ogden and south to Provo; and the buses fill in the middle. A household that chooses a home near a TRAX station can genuinely live with one car, which is a sentence that is true nowhere else on the Wasatch Front. The canyon winter access page covers the ski buses and the rules that move a powder morning.

The airport and the drive

Salt Lake City International (SLC), in the county. It is a Delta hub with a terminal rebuilt in the 2020s and direct flights to most of the country, and it is ~10 min from downtown; ~25 to 30 min from the south end. For frequent flyers that is one of the quiet arguments for this county over the ones around it: Davis County is close, Utah County is forty-five minutes, and everything beyond is a real drive. The Green Line TRAX runs from the airport terminal to downtown, which matters more than it sounds on a snowy January morning.

School districts

Five districts serve the county: Salt Lake City, Granite, Jordan, Canyons, Murray. Salt Lake City and Murray each run their own; Granite covers the center of the valley from South Salt Lake and Millcreek across to West Valley City, Kearns, Magna, and Taylorsville; Canyons covers the east bench and south end from Cottonwood Heights through Sandy and Draper; and Jordan covers the southwest, West Jordan, South Jordan, Riverton, Herriman, and Bluffdale. The city guide for any town 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

University of Utah, Salt Lake Community College, Westminster University. The University of Utah is the state's flagship and its largest research institution, sitting on the east bench above downtown with its own TRAX line and its own hospital system; Salt Lake Community College spreads across the valley with its main campus in Taylorsville; and Westminster University is the small private campus in Sugar House. For medical care this county is the center of the whole region: Intermountain Medical Center, University of Utah Hospital, Primary Children's, St. Mark's, LDS Hospital, Riverton, Alta View, Jordan Valley, Lone Peak. Whatever specialist a family ends up needing, there is a good chance the specialist is in this county no matter which county they live in, and that is one of the quiet reasons the county holds its value.

The county itself runs the library system, the health department, the recorder and assessor, and a park system that includes the valley's big regional parks and the Jordan River Parkway, which runs the full length of the county. Largest employers, by the state's list: Intermountain Health, University of Utah, State of Utah, Delta Air Lines, Zions Bancorporation, with the airport, the hospitals, and the school districts close behind.