City Bountiful, Davis County
Utah's second settlement, on the Wasatch bench north of Salt Lake City
Bountiful, the bench town that still owns its own power
About 45,762 people at the 2020 census, on the bench twelve miles north of Salt Lake City. Three canyon mouths open straight off the street grid, a downtown plaza carries a 520 foot ice ribbon through the winter, two days in July close Main Street, and the city still runs its own power, water, landfill and fiber. Eight pages on the town itself, with the county subjects every Davis town shares linked out.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
Bountiful is a bench town on the east side of I-15, twelve miles north of Salt Lake City, and the second place anyone settled in Utah. What sets it apart from the other south Davis suburbs is easy to point at: three canyon mouths open straight off the street grid, a historic Main Street the city has spent years fixing up, and a bench road that strings the temple, the golf course and two trailheads along the hillside above the valley. The quieter distinction is how much the city owns. Bountiful runs its own electric power, its water, its garbage and landfill, and since 2025 a fiber network reaching every address, which is not how most of the Wasatch Front is put together. This hub is the map to eight deeper pages on the town, and it hands the island, the bay, the base and the lakeside trails to the Davis County pages the whole county shares.
The shape of it
The second town anyone built in Utah is also the one that kept the most of itself
Bountiful exists because Perrigrine Sessions went looking for winter feed for his flocks in September 1847 and stopped here, nine miles north of the new settlement in the Salt Lake Valley. He built a dugout with skins for a roof at roughly 250 North and 280 West, a corner that still exists in the modern grid, and wintered there as the only household until the spring of 1848. Eight years later the town threw an earthwork wall around itself, and the footprint of that wall, generally bounded by 4th North, 2nd West, 5th South and 4th East, is still walkable today.
The second thing to hold about Bountiful is what City Hall owns. The city runs its own electric utility, bought after lights first arrived in 1907, and it also runs the culinary water, the garbage collection, a landfill you have to prove residency to use, the cemetery, the golf course on the ridge, and, since 2025, an open access fiber network reaching every address in town. Almost nothing else on the Wasatch Front is put together that way, and it changes what the first week in a new house looks like. City Hall sits at 795 South Main and keeps a four day week, Monday to Thursday, so a Friday errand there is a wasted trip.
The third thing is that the growing is largely done. There is no open land left inside the city, the population has been close to flat since the last census, and what is new arrives as infill, redevelopment or an accessory unit tucked into an existing lot. The city adopted a new general plan, Bountiful By Design, in December 2025, and on the same night adopted a local wildland urban interface map that pulls new construction, major remodels and even re-roofing on the mapped bench under stricter fire-resistant building rules. For a buyer weighing an address, that map matters more than any brochure.
Bountiful at a glance
45,762
counted at the 2020 census
~4,400 ft
downtown; Bountiful Boulevard runs well above it
1847
Perrigrine Sessions winters in a dugout
3
canyon mouths open off the street grid
Who runs what
Ask who runs a given thing in Bountiful and there are four honest answers
Knowing which one you are dealing with saves a phone call, so it is worth sorting out before you spend an afternoon on hold.
Bountiful City owns an unusual amount of its own plumbing. Electric power, culinary water, garbage and recycling, the landfill, the cemetery, the golf course and the fiber network all come on one consolidated city bill, which you sort out in person at 795 South Main, Monday to Thursday. That is most of the everyday utilities in one place, and it is the single most useful thing to understand about the town.
A set of south Davis districts handles the shared services the city does not. The South Davis Sewer District bills the sanitary sewer separately from the city account, and the South Davis Recreation District runs the recreation center and the downtown ice ribbon at a resident rate shared across five cities, so a Woods Cross address pays what a Bountiful address pays. Fire cover is pooled across the same cluster of towns.
The county and the state own what sits outside the street grid: the roads beyond the city network, the published county trail inventory, and the fishing and wildlife rules on the county waters. One small catch trips up new arrivals, which is that the pond carrying this city's name, Bountiful Pond, actually sits across the line on 1600 North in Woods Cross.
And everything above the last paved street belongs to the Forest Service, including the Mueller Park picnic ground and the trails out of the canyon mouths. Walking in costs nothing; the group picnic sites are reserved through Recreation.gov. The full utilities picture, bill by bill, is on the mover page.
1847 to 2025
A dugout, a wall, a water system, a power plant and then a fiber network
The founding is short and specific. Perrigrine Sessions moved about nine miles north of the new settlement in the Salt Lake Valley on 27 September 1847, looking for feed for his flocks and herds, built a dugout with skins for a roof, and wintered there as the only household on the ground until the spring of 1848. The place was called Sessions' Settlement, carried North Canyon Ward as its other name, and the two were used more or less interchangeably until 1855, when it was officially named Bountiful. The townsite itself had been laid out by Jesse W. Fox.
The wall belongs to that same year, and it is the best surviving evidence for how seriously the early town took itself. Residents voted to enclose the townsite with an earthwork of mud and straw, three miles in length, eight feet high on the outside and four feet thick at the top, paid for according to what each household could afford. The footprint runs generally along 4th North, 2nd West, 5th South and 4th East. Stand at any corner of that rectangle today and you are standing on the line.
By 1890 the citizens of East Bountiful had decided precinct government was not enough, petitioned the Territorial Legislature, and were granted a city charter in 1892, with Joseph L. Holbrook elected the first mayor. His name recurs on the map above town, at the mouth of Holbrook Canyon. A water system was begun in 1906, electric lights arrived in 1907 through the efforts of the city's own residents, and the city bought that system and has owned it since. The mover page follows that thread all the way to 2025.
What makes the sequence worth telling is that it never stopped. The same city that bought a power plant in the 1900s built an open access fiber network in the 2020s, still runs its own landfill, and still prices water by how far uphill it has to be pumped. The buildings that survive from the first half of the story stand on one street, and the Main Street page walks it: the 1863 Tabernacle, the museum holding the Davis County Clipper from 1892, and a plaza built on a former school site.
A dugout at 250 North and 280 West in 1847, a wall around four streets in 1855, and a city that has been buying its own infrastructure ever since.
Across the county
Two of the county's seven subjects reach this city, and five honestly do not
Davis County carries seven pages written once for all fifteen towns. Bountiful sits at the south end of the county, three canyon mouths open above it and the county's only year round ice is in it, so two of the seven are genuinely local here. The island, the bay, the base, the county ponds and the Legacy trail are all real and none of them starts at a Bountiful street, so this companion hands them over instead of borrowing them.
Above the last street
The Davis canyons
Eight canyon mouths as one set, with the crest road above them, the snow calendar and the shoreline link between them.
Read the guide
Days out
Family weekends in Davis County
What a paid day in this county costs and what season it keeps, from the wave pool north to the ice downtown.
Read the guide
The water edges
The lakeside parks
The county's fishable ponds and their rules, including the one on 1600 North that carries this city's name and not its address.
Read the guide
All of it
Davis County on The Local
The index for this county: a companion for each town, and the seven subjects no single town owns.
Open the hubThree more county subjects sit half an hour or more from this doorstep. A state park island reached by a causeway from Syracuse, a managed wetland with a brand new access permit rule on it, and an air force installation that is the county's largest employer are all Davis County subjects and none of them is a Bountiful amenity. The Legacy Parkway Trail is a fourth: it runs the west side of the county and its trailheads belong to North Salt Lake, Woods Cross, West Bountiful, Centerville and Farmington rather than to this city. All seven are indexed on the Davis County hub.
If you only have one day
A day here climbs in the morning and walks four blocks of Main in the afternoon
First thing
Be at the gate at seven
The Forest Service opens the Mueller Park gate at 7 a.m. and closes it at 10 p.m. Elephant Rock is about three and a half miles up, and the lot is small.
The trailhead page
Late morning
Find six bronze bees
They are hidden along Main between 200 South and 100 North, the clues are published, and the finish is a free sticker at 90 North Main.
The downtown page
Afternoon
Drive the boulevard
Bountiful Boulevard strings the temple at 640 South, the course at 2430 South and two canyon trailheads onto one bench road with the whole valley below it.
The temple page
Or pick from eight
The ranked list
Eight addresses with the operator, the season and the fee position named on each, and six of them cost nothing at all.
The ranked listLiving with it
The bench and the flats get two different bills for the same water
Most cities charge one water rate. Bountiful charges by elevation, because water pumped uphill costs more to deliver, so the same house pays a little more for water on the high bench than it would on the low ground. It is a small difference on the bill, and it is the most honest single sentence anyone has written about the two halves of this city, because it is the city itself putting a price on height.
The rest of bench life is the same trade in different currencies. More snow than the airport gauge suggests, steeper driveways, a longer run to the freeway, and now a mapped wildland urban interface area in which a routine roof replacement triggers fire-resistant construction requirements. Against that: two canyon mouths at the end of the road, the whole valley out of a west facing window, and a bench road that links the temple, the golf course and both trailheads without ever dropping into the grid.
The flats trade the other way. Quicker to I-15 and to the Woods Cross train station, flatter lots, less shoveling, no view to speak of, and the city's oldest housing sitting inside the walking radius of Main Street, the plaza, the market and the museum. Neither half is the better buy, and this companion is not going to pretend otherwise. What it can do is name the things that actually differ: the water bill, the snow, the roof rules, the walk to Main and the drive to the freeway.
The rest of it, the prices and the tax arithmetic and the inspection list that comes with a city whose stock is mostly older than 1980, lives on the practical city guide. This companion stays on what the place is like to use.
The Bountiful companion
Eight pages, and three of them start at a canyon mouth
Everything The Local has written about Bountiful itself: the ranked eight, the busy Forest Service trailhead and the quiet creek canyon above it, the two days in July that close Main Street, the building on the bench that half of south Davis navigates by, the four blocks of downtown the city has been spending on, and what an address here asks of a household.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Quick answers
Bountiful, answered
Being early, and keeping things. It is credited as Utah's second settlement, founded when Perrigrine Sessions wintered in a dugout here in 1847 at roughly 250 North and 280 West in today's grid. It is known for the temple on the upper east bench, the landmark half of south Davis navigates by. It is known for Handcart Days, the festival that closes Main Street for Pioneer Day each July. And among people who look closely, it is known for how much of its own infrastructure the city still owns, from the electric utility it bought after 1907 to the fiber network it finished in 2025.
For a specific kind of day rather than for a holiday. There is no state park inside the city and nothing here draws a coach. What there is instead is three canyon mouths inside the street grid, a developed Forest Service picnic ground and trailhead at Mueller Park with a gate that opens at seven in the morning, a five acre downtown plaza carrying a 520 foot outdoor ice ribbon in winter and a farmers market in summer, a bronze sculpture walk with a hidden bee hunt along four blocks of Main Street, and a museum holding the Davis County Clipper from 1892 to 2004.
Older than any other town in Utah except Salt Lake City. Perrigrine Sessions moved about nine miles north of the new settlement on 27 September 1847, built a dugout with skins for a roof, and was the only household on the ground until the spring of 1848. The place was known as Sessions Settlement and as North Canyon Ward until it was officially named Bountiful in 1855, the same year residents walled the townsite. It incorporated as a city in 1892 with Joseph L. Holbrook as its first mayor.
Three canyon mouths open directly off the city's own streets, which is unusual for a fully developed suburb. Mueller Park at the top of 1800 South is a developed Forest Service site with flush toilets, drinking water and eighteen group picnic sites, and its trail runs about six miles one way to Rudy's Flat with Elephant Rock about three and a half miles up. Holbrook Canyon starts across the road from the temple on Bountiful Boulevard and the county lists it at 4.7 miles with a warning that sections are hard to follow. North Canyon Trail 601 is reached from the end of Canyon Creek Road.
Bountiful City itself. Electric lights arrived in 1907 through the efforts of the city's residents, the city purchased the system, and it has owned and operated it ever since as a municipal utility. The same city bill can carry culinary water, garbage collection, curbside recycling and storm water, and the city separately runs a landfill that only Bountiful residents may use. Sanitary sewer is the one common utility the city does not run: that goes through the South Davis Sewer District, and natural gas comes from the statewide provider.
No. The nearest station is Woods Cross, at 750 South 800 West in the neighboring city, so a train trip from Bountiful starts with a short drive or a bus. UTA also runs an on demand microtransit zone covering south Davis, launched in 2022, which is a curb to curb van hailed by app rather than a fixed route, and it connects to that station. Route numbers and zone boundaries shift over time, so check the transit agency directly rather than any number printed on a guide.
Around Pioneer Day, 24 July, every year, with the celebration spread across that day and the one beside it. The evening before the parade brings park activities, concessions, games and a free concert at Bountiful City Park. Parade morning opens with a race, then the parade itself, then daytime activities and fireworks after dark at Mueller Park Junior High. The parade runs north along Main Street from 1500 South to 400 North, then turns west to 100 West, a total of 1.8 miles. The Handcart Days page carries the full schedule.
A five acre municipal plaza on the block just east of Main Street, addressed at 75 East 200 South, which opened in December 2020. It carries a 520 foot outdoor ice ribbon run by the South Davis Recreation District in winter, the city's Thursday farmers market in summer, and a share of the city's public art. It stands on the footprint of the 1904 Stoker School, which came down in 2017 after it was found structurally unsound. It is also the one city park where dogs are not allowed.
That is a housing question rather than an editorial one, and this companion hands it over rather than answering it. What these pages can tell you is what the place actually asks of a household: a water bill priced by elevation, a wildland urban interface map adopted in December 2025 that reaches re-roofing on the mapped ground, snow on the bench that the valley floor gauge does not measure, no train station inside the city, and a housing stock that is mostly older than 1980. The practical city guide carries prices, taxes and schools.
Eight pages on the city, and one bench that changes the bill
A day here is a trailhead at seven and four blocks of Main by lunchtime. An address here asks a different set of questions: whether a street sits inside the local wildland map that now reaches re-roofing, which of the two water elevations a meter is on, which utility serves a particular house because the city does not serve all of them, what the general plan adopted in December 2025 says about the ground next door, and how a household without a train station actually gets to work. Tell me the streets you are circling and I will put you with a Davis County partner agent who works south Davis, and stay on the file for the financing side.
Or call Scott: (435) 357-4345or send Scott a message
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