Wasatch County · County profile
Wasatch County, Utah.
The Wasatch Back's working valley: a high floor of ranch ground and reservoir shore tucked behind the ridge from Park City, with two towns, two big lakes, and no ski resort of its own anywhere inside the county line. Wasatch County holds 38,514 people on ~1,176 sq mi, and it is the expensive, beautiful middle ground between the Wasatch Front and the Uinta Basin. I am Scott Buehler, a Utah resident of twenty-plus years and licensed in real estate and lending, and this page gives you the read I would share in person: what the county costs, how it moves, and what a weekend here actually holds.
Wasatch County is the settled heart of the Wasatch Back, the band of high valleys tucked behind the Wasatch Range from Heber Valley up toward Park City. Heber City sits at the center at ~5,600 ft, mountain valley, the seat and the largest town by a wide margin, and Midway lies a few miles north of it; between them the two towns hold most of the county's 38,514 people. The ground around and between them is where the county's character lives: hay fields and horse property on the valley floor, ranch country climbing the benches, and two big reservoirs, Jordanelle above Heber City and Deer Creek below it, holding the water that half the state comes to play on.
The fact that explains the county is that it sits between two economies and gets pulled by both. Park City is about twenty minutes up US-40, and its resort jobs and its housing prices spill down the highway onto Wasatch ground; Provo and the Wasatch Front are over the hill on US-189, close enough to commute to and far enough away to feel separate. On top of that the county runs its own working base, the school district, the hospital, the retail, and a lodging industry built around the lakes and the ski traffic, so it is neither Park City's bedroom nor Provo's but a place with its own center that two big neighbors keep filling in. Growth since the 2020 count is +10.7%, roughly 3,729 people, and with no interstate and only two highways in, that growth lands where the valley lets it, in and around the two towns rather than sprawled across the open ground.
This page is the county in one place: the at-a-glance table, the two towns, what a dollar buys on the floor and up by the reservoirs, how a county with no interstate gets around, and the weekend on the lakes. It is written in my voice, but I am the connector here rather than the local agent: I have been in the Utah market for more than twenty years, and when you are ready to tour I bring in a partner agent who works the Wasatch Back week in and week out.
In one line
Two towns and two reservoirs on a ranch valley behind Park City
At a glance
Wasatch 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 | Wasatch County |
|---|---|
| Size and growth | |
| County seat | Heber City |
| Population | 38,514 |
| Rank among Utah counties | #11 of 29 |
| Growth since 2020 | +10.7% (3,729 people) |
| 2026 outlook | 39,260 |
| Land area | ~1,176 sq mi |
| People per square mile | ~33 per sq mi |
| Climate and land | |
| Elevation at the seat | ~5,600 ft, mountain valley |
| Climate | Long cold winters, warm dry summers |
| Typical July high | ~85 °F |
| Typical January low | ~17 °F |
| Federal land | 56% federal |
| Private land | 32% private |
| Cost | |
| Median home value | ~$787,300 |
| Median household income | ~$117,600 |
| Property tax | ~0.5% effective on a primary home |
| Combined sales tax at the seat | ~7.55% |
| Getting around | |
| Interstates | None; US-40 and US-189 |
| Transit | High Valley Transit (on-demand); no rail |
| Nearest commercial airport | Heber Valley Airport, general aviation only; SLC ~50 min |
| Drive to Salt Lake City airport | ~50 min from Heber City |
| Schools and services | |
| School districts | Wasatch County School District |
| Colleges and universities | None in the county; Utah Valley University ~40 min |
| Hospitals | Heber Valley Hospital (Intermountain) |
| Largest employers | Wasatch County School District, Intermountain Health, Western States Lodging & Management, Walmart |
| Outdoors | |
| National parks and monuments | None in the county; Timpanogos Cave National Monument ~45 min |
| State parks | Wasatch Mountain State Park, Jordanelle State Park, Deer Creek State Park |
| Ski areas | None in the county; Park City and Deer Valley ~30 min, Sundance ~40 min |
| On MovingUtah | |
| City guides | 2 city guides |
| Ranked things-to-do lists | 2 ranked lists across 2 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
Heber City at the middle, Midway up the road.
The seat and the biggest towns
Heber City is the seat, the largest town, and the county's only real city, holding the larger share of the county's people. It sits on the west bench of the valley where US-40 and US-189 meet, and it carries the load for the whole county: the hospital, the high school, the airport, the big-box retail, and most of the jobs that do not sit on the reservoir or the ranches. Its older core is a Utah farm town with a wide Main Street that US-40 runs straight through, and the growth rings that core in newer subdivisions on the benches and along the roads out of town.
Midway is the second town, a few miles north of Heber City at the foot of the Wasatch, and it could hardly read more differently. The town was settled by Swiss immigrants in the 1860s, and that heritage is still its public face: the white church steeples, the Swiss Days festival each September, and a village center that looks across to Wasatch Mountain State Park and the Soldier Hollow slopes. Midway's housing skews newer than Heber City's core, much of it on larger lots, and its prices run with the resort country it borders rather than with the working town below it.
The two towns are ten minutes apart, and the ground between them is what makes Wasatch County itself: hay meadows, horse fencing, and the shore of Jordanelle Reservoir running up toward the Park City line. Where you land in the county is mostly a choice between those two centers, the working convenience of Heber City against the quieter, pricier village feel of Midway, and beyond either town the county spreads into smaller settlements and open ranch valleys where a house commonly comes with acreage rather than a postage-stamp lot.
Every city guide in the county
Each of the two towns has a full guide on this site: what it is like, what it costs, its listings, its price pages, and its communities. Largest first.
How the county grows now
- A strong run. Wasatch grew +10.7% between the 2020 count and the 2025 estimate, about 3,729 people, a fast five years for a valley this size.
- Heber City carries it. The seat takes most of the new rooftops and nearly all of the commercial growth, while Midway adds at a slower pace, held in by the resort country and the park ground around it.
- The open ground stays open. The two towns cover a small share of the county's ~1,176 sq mi; 56% federal of Wasatch will never be subdivided, and the valley floor between the towns still runs to hay and pasture rather than rooftops.
- The outlook. A straight line through the 2020 count and the 2025 estimate puts the county near 39,260 in 2026, more of the same for a valley that keeps adding people inside two towns.
New homes, where they still exist
What a budget buys
What Wasatch County costs, and what a dollar buys here.
Home values
The county median is ~$787,300, a number that clears every Wasatch Front county on this site and reads like a mountain-town figure rather than a city one. It is pulled up by the resort-adjacent shore around Jordanelle and Deer Creek and by Midway's pricier stock, and it hides the county's real spread, which runs by age and by distance from the water more than by which town you are in. Heber City's older core is the county's most approachable ground, and the newer the house and the closer the lake, the higher the number climbs.
The price pages show the ladder street by street. Under three-quarters of a million is a real but thin search, nearly all of it Heber City's older town stock: Heber City under $750K. The broad middle, where the county median and most of its newer homes sit, runs below a million dollars, from the median up toward the mark: Heber City under $1M is the page that search lands on, with Heber City under $1.25M and Midway under $1.5M there for buyers whose budget stretches past the mark. Above a million, the reservoir shore and the bench lots with the views take over, with Heber City over $2M and luxury homes in Midway among the listings.
What a Wasatch County home actually is depends on which layer of the valley you buy into. The oldest stock is Heber City's core, early brick and mid-century houses on town lots that carry the county's lowest prices, and the newest is the two-story construction filling the benches and the edges of both towns, which the Heber City new-construction and Midway new-construction pages cover. Out on the ranch ground the house usually comes with acreage, a shop, and room for animals, which is this county's own flavor of listing, so the acreage and horse-property pages are worth reading before you shop, alongside single-story and RV parking for the rest of the range.
Taxes in this county
Property tax in Wasatch runs ~0.5% effective on a primary home, with a primary residence taxed at 55 percent of its market value under Utah's rule, and because the county runs one school district, the school share of that bill is the same in Heber City and Midway. What moves your total from there is the assessed value, which is why the newest homes and the reservoir-shore places carry the largest tax line, plus any town or district bond on top of the base rate. 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 runs ~7.55% in Heber City, ordinary by Utah standards and a few tenths under the bigger Wasatch Front cities. Net, Wasatch is not a tax-light county: the property side is moderate and the sales side is typical, and the real cost of living here is the home price rather than the levies on it. For the full picture 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 Wasatch median means for a monthly budget.
- Conventional mortgage calculatorA full payment breakdown with the Utah tax and insurance lines.
- Rent vs buyWorth running before you commit to the Wasatch Back.
- Every calculator in one place
Getting around
Two highways in, no interstate at all.
Interstates and transit
No interstate touches Wasatch County, and the two highways that do are the whole story of how the county moves. US-40 runs north out of Heber City toward Jordanelle and Park City and east over Daniels Summit toward the Uinta Basin; US-189 drops south down Provo Canyon to meet I-15 at Provo. Everything and everyone enters on one of those two roads, which is why a winter slide in either canyon is front-page news for anyone who commutes, and also why the county's commuters split the way they do: Park City workers go north on US-40, Wasatch Front workers go the other way, and the rest of the valley stays home to work in the county's own jobs.
Transit is thin and new. High Valley Transit runs on-demand rides across the Heber Valley rather than fixed bus routes, which works for errands and appointments but does not carry a daily commuter to Park City or Provo, and there is no rail anywhere in the county. The honest version is that Wasatch County is a drive-everywhere place: households need a car, and anyone who works outside the county needs a reliable one, because the daily drive runs through canyon weather, and canyons keep their own rules in January.
The airport and the drive
For air travel, Heber Valley Airport is a general-aviation field, a busy one in summer when the valley's morning thermals draw gliders and private planes, but it has no commercial service. The real gateway is Salt Lake City International, ~50 min from Heber City to the terminal, most of it on US-40 to I-80 and then west toward the airport. That fifty-minute drive is the quiet cost of life on the Wasatch Back: the airport, the largest hospitals, and the state's densest job market are close enough to reach and far enough to notice, and the county's own hospital and daily services cover everything else.
Drive times, off-peak
- Heber City to Park City
- About 20 minutes up US-40, with Jordanelle Reservoir on the right.
- Heber City to Salt Lake City International
- About fifty minutes on US-40 to I-80.
- Heber City to Provo
- About 35 minutes down US-189 through Provo Canyon.
- Heber City to Deer Creek
- About 15 minutes down US-189 to the dam and the boat ramps.
- Midway to Heber City
- About ten minutes on the road between the two towns.
Things to do
The weekend here runs to the reservoirs.
On The Local, the county's two towns each carry a ranked things-to-do list, and both are honest lengths for real places: Heber City's runs eleven deep and Midway's nine. Read them together and the county's Saturday comes into focus, because both lists point the same direction, toward the water and the valley that holds it. Call the reservoirs lakes or call them by their dam names, Deer Creek and Jordanelle, the two big sheets of blue are where Wasatch County spends its weekends, with the state parks, the excursion railroad, and the old Swiss town of Midway filling in the hours between.
Region reads
The county-wide pages that no single town owns.
- Jordanelle Reservoir, Hailstone to Rock Cliff
- Deer Creek Reservoir and the dam
- Wasatch Mountain State Park
The honest read
The honest read is that the county's weekend bench is real but slanted: the water is the deep side, and Jordanelle and Deer Creek are shared with the whole Wasatch Front, so a flawless July Saturday at either boat ramp is crowded in a way the valley itself never is. The quiet side is the county's own ground, Midway's Swiss blocks and the ranching lanes south toward Wallsburg, and the one true gap is downhill skiing, which does not exist inside the county line: Deer Valley and Park City Mountain sit about half an hour up US-40 and Sundance about forty minutes down the canyon, close enough to use and never quite yours.
Schools and services
One district, one hospital, and the colleges down the hill.
School districts
The county runs a single school district, Wasatch County School District, and it covers both towns and the whole valley, which makes the school question simpler than it is in most counties on this site: Heber City and Midway feed the same system, so two homes a few miles apart rarely land in different districts the way they do along the Wasatch Front. 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
There is no college or university inside the county; the nearest is Utah Valley University in Orem, about 40 minutes away, so households with college students commute out of the valley for class or the student lives away during the school year, a real piece of the county's cost that the home price does not show. Medical care is the same coin on the other side: Heber Valley Hospital (Intermountain), a full community hospital that handles the county's daily care, with Provo and Salt Lake City a drive away for anything it cannot.
Largest employers, by the state's list: Wasatch County School District, Intermountain Health, Western States Lodging & Management, Walmart. Read that list and you see the county's shape: the school district and the hospital anchor daily life, Walmart anchors the retail the valley needs, and the lodging company on the list is the tell that tourism is a pillar of the economy, because the resorts and the reservoirs send a steady stream of visitors through the county's hotels even though the ski lifts stand over the line in the next county.
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.
- Getting pre-approvedWorth doing before you drive the canyon to shop.
- How to choose a neighborhood when you move upTown grid, bench, or ranch acreage: the county's ground types differ more than their miles.
Compare it
Wasatch 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 Wasatch County and any other county on this site, and the same rows line up side by side for both.
Build a matchupCity vs city
Compare the county's cities
Heber City and Midway both sit in the picker, ready to go head to head with any other town in Utah.
Compare citiesAlready own here?
What a home in Wasatch County is worth
A value built by hand from real Wasatch Back sales, not an algorithm, and a path to get featured where buyers are already looking.
Start the valuationCommon questions
Wasatch County, answered.
What cities are in Wasatch County?
Heber City and Midway are the two towns with full guides on this site, and they are the two that matter for a move: Heber City is the seat and the largest by a wide margin, and Midway sits a few miles north of it. The county's remaining settled ground is a set of smaller towns and unincorporated valley and reservoir communities, covered from the two main towns rather than carrying guides of their own. The two towns together hold most of the county's people.
Where are the least expensive homes in Wasatch County?
In Heber City's older core. The county median is ~$787,300, and the addresses under it are mostly the early brick and mid-century houses on Heber's original grid, the one ground in the county where a search under three-quarters of a million turns up much at all. The trade is age and distance from the water: the newer the house and the closer the reservoir, the higher the price, and Midway and the shore around Jordanelle and Deer Creek sit at the top.
How far is Wasatch County from Salt Lake City and Park City?
Wasatch County has no interstate of its own, so every trip out starts on one of its two highways. The drive to Salt Lake City International is ~50 min from Heber City, most of it US-40 to I-80. Park City is the closer big anchor, about twenty minutes up US-40, and Provo is about 35 minutes the other way down US-189, which is why the county's commuters split between Park City and the Wasatch Front depending on where the work is.
Is Wasatch County still growing?
Yes, steadily. The Census Bureau's July 2025 estimate puts the county at 38,514 people, up +10.7% from the 2020 count, a gain of roughly 3,729 people in five years. Most of that growth has landed in and around Heber City, with Midway growing more slowly, and a straight-line outlook puts the county near 39,260 in 2026. For a valley with two highways and no interstate, the growth keeps pressure on the roads and the school district as much as on the housing market.
What is there to do in Wasatch County on a weekend?
A Wasatch weekend usually starts on the water. Jordanelle and Deer Creek reservoirs are the county's biggest draw, with boating, fishing, and state-park shoreline, and Wasatch Mountain State Park and Soldier Hollow add golf and the old Olympic cross-country venue. On the dry side, Heber City runs the Heber Valley Railroad and Midway has the Homestead Crater, its Swiss-built village, and the Swiss Days festival. Both towns carry ranked things-to-do lists on The Local, Heber City eleven deep and Midway nine, and downhill skiing waits just over the county line at Park City and Deer Valley, about half an hour away, with Sundance about forty minutes.
Next step
Looking at the Wasatch Back? Let's find your town.
Tell me where the work is, what the budget looks like, and whether the town grid, the bench, or the ranch ground fits. I will give you the honest read on which side of the county makes sense, and connect you with the partner agent who works the Wasatch Back 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.