City Clearfield, Davis County
A city of about 35,100 in central Davis County, assembled between a naval depot and an air field
Clearfield, the city that was built from its edges inward
Clearfield is a city of 31,909 on about eight square miles of flat lakebed in central Davis County, roughly half an hour north of Salt Lake City on Interstate 15 and about fifteen minutes south of Ogden. An air field arrived on its eastern edge in 1940 and a naval supply depot on the west a few years later, and the town filled in as housing between them, so there is no old main street to find. This is the hub for everything The Local has written about the city: the Freeport Center the depot became, the road across town and the airman it is named for, the downtown going in beside the train, its parks and pool, and what an address here asks of a household.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
Clearfield is a city of about 35,100 in central Davis County, roughly half an hour north of Salt Lake City on Interstate 15 and about fifteen minutes south of Ogden. What makes it unusual is how it came together. Two federal installations landed on it four years apart, an air field on the east side in 1940 and a naval supply depot on the west a few years later, and the town filled in as housing between them. So there is no old main street to walk, which is why the city is building a downtown from scratch beside its commuter rail stop. The depot is now the Freeport Center, a large private warehouse district that is still the biggest employer inside the city limits. For a buyer it is one of the more affordable ways into Davis County, close to Hill Air Force Base, on the freeway and the train, with a full slate of city parks and a big year round pool.
Start here
Two installations arrived four years apart, and no town center was ever built between them
Most Utah cities can be read from their main street outward. This one cannot, because it does not have one, and the reason is a pair of dates. An air field went up along the eastern boundary starting in 1940. On the western side, the Navy took farm ground in the early 1940s and built a supply depot, and the residential grid between the two installations filled in as housing for the people who worked at one or the other. The city grew inward from its edges instead of outward from a center, so there is no old commercial core here to restore, no block of century old storefronts with a name on it.
That single fact explains most of the map. The warehouse district on the west side is still there and still working, addressed in letters and numbers rather than street names, and it has its own page. The air field is still on the eastern edge. Interstate 15 runs down the middle with the city's own door at exit 334, and FrontRunner stops on the west side at Clearfield Station. What that leaves is a compact city with a large employer on each flank and a freeway and a rail line threading between them, which is why the biggest civic project going is not a restoration but a construction site: a downtown being built from nothing beside the commuter platform.
A single rule holds across the Clearfield pages: they cover roads, buildings, parks, pipes and dates, never the people who work at the base or in the Freeport Center. Hill Air Force Base is a neighbor and a landmark, and its gates, flight paths and employment footprint are laid out as plain facts on the county page. The Clearfield pages stay on the near side of that line.
Getting around
Two named highways, an interstate door, and its own stop on the commuter rail
Clearfield is compact and flat, and its two freeway ramps sit close together, so the drives that matter stay short. These are the common ones from the middle of town.
| Destination | Distance | Typical drive |
|---|---|---|
| Salt Lake City | About 26 miles | About 30 minutes on I-15 |
| Salt Lake City International Airport | About 24 miles | About 30 minutes |
| Ogden | About 10 miles | About 15 minutes |
Distances and times are approximate and depend on traffic and your exact street.
Two roads carry most of the city's traffic. State Street is the older diagonal arterial, signed SR-126, and it runs across town on an angle. The east to west road is SR-193, which crosses State Street near Main Street and runs from the west side of the city out to the south entrance of Hill Air Force Base. That road is signed the Bernard Fisher Highway, named for an airman who grew up here, and it has its own page. Interstate 15 gives the city its own door at exit 334, and FrontRunner stops on the west side at Clearfield Station, so a car free commute south to Salt Lake City or north to Ogden is a real option from here.
Two things about the sound of the place are worth saying plainly, because a brochure never will. Hill Air Force Base runs along the eastern edge, so aircraft noise is a genuine part of life, and how much of it a given home gets depends a lot on the block. And the Freeport Center on the southwest side moves freight by rail and by truck on working days, so streets near its perimeter carry that rhythm. Both are easy to check by standing on the street on a weekday morning before you commit to a home, and a local agent who works this end of the county will know the pattern block by block.
The long view
A dry farming ridge called Sand Ridge, and then everything else came from Washington
The first name here was Sand Ridge, which was a description rather than a compliment. Dry farming started on the ridge in 1869, and Richard and Emily Hamblin built a dugout on it in 1877, dirt floor and a roof thatched from sagebrush. The name changed to Clearfield when the community organized itself as a school district, at the suggestion of a local teacher who had noticed how open and unobstructed the ground was. Farming came first, a settlement second, a school district third and the name last. Hamblin Park still carries the family name on the map today.
For the first half of the twentieth century this was a farming town with a rail line through it, incorporated as a town in 1922 and as a city in 1946. Then the two installations arrived and it stopped being a farming town in about eighteen months. The air field went in on the eastern boundary starting in 1940. On the western side the Navy took roughly 841 acres of farm ground and, in the early 1940s, commissioned a supply depot there, an inland site chosen because it was far enough from the coast to be safe and close enough to reach it fast by rail. At its wartime peak it put thousands of people to work inside one fence.
The Navy left in 1962, and in 1963 the depot was sold and reopened as the Freeport Center. The name is a tax term, not a place name: a free port is a zone where goods can be stored without inventory tax, and a state law passed that year made the old depot attractive as a distribution center for the western states. The warehouse district is still the largest employer inside the city limits, and it is the reason there is no downtown here to speak of, which is the whole idea behind Clearfield Station. The full story of the depot and the district is on its own page.
A dry farming ridge in 1869, a name from a schoolteacher, and then two federal installations in four years. This city was assembled, not grown.
The county
Three of the seven county subjects reach an address here and this companion opens each of them through one specific door
Davis County carries seven subjects written once for all fifteen cities instead of fifteen times over. Clearfield has a genuine stake in three of them, and in each case there is one page here that is the honest way in. Here are the three, with the door named, and below them the four that are somebody else's ground.
Through the road
Hill Air Force Base
The installation, the museum, the air show, the gates and the noise contours, written once for the whole county.
Read the guide
Through the parks
The lakeside parks
Every county water edge you can walk to off a city street, with the hours, the rules and the state fishery limits.
Read the guide
Through the pool
Family weekends in Davis County
Nine county outings priced and seasoned in one place, free ones first, with the indoor water day among them.
Read the guideFour of the seven county guides describe places you reach from here by a drive rather than from a city street. Antelope Island is entered from the causeway at Syracuse, which is a different city's entrance and a different city's page. The Legacy Parkway Trail runs through five cities at the south end of the county and none of them is this one, although the city's own rail trail is part of the same hundred mile Golden Spoke network and the parks page names that connection once. There are no canyons here at all: the ground is flat lakebed from one city limit to the other, with no bench, no canyon mouth and no trailhead. And the birding ground at Farmington Bay is at the wrong end of the county, on a different wetland band from the shorelands west of this city. Three of the seven carry real weight from an address in Clearfield. The remaining four are a drive, and the Davis County hub indexes all seven so the choice stays yours.
If you only have one day
A warehouse grid, a highway with a name on it, a new park on a platform and sixteen lit courts
First thing
Drive the letters
A wartime warehouse district still addressed in letters and numbers rather than street names, with rail docks on one side and truck docks on the other. Free, and about twenty minutes.
The depot page
Mid morning
See the new park
Two and a quarter acres of finished public park beside the commuter rail platform and a building site, the first piece of a downtown going in from nothing. Free, about half an hour.
The downtown page
Midday
Buy a day pass
A lazy river, a lap pool, a hot tub and a summer splash pad, open the year round. Admission and hours are on the city's page.
The pool page
Late afternoon
Take a racket
Sixteen lit pickleball courts and three sand volleyball courts across two eleven and a half acre parks either side of a pond. Free to walk in.
The courts pageThe year here
A two week run at the front of July, and a steady municipal calendar the rest of the year
The city's summer is built around the Fourth, and it is a two week program rather than a single day. In a typical year it runs from late June through the Fourth of July: a citywide scavenger hunt, an outdoor movie at Steed Park, a bridge painting evening at the Center Street bridge, a patriotic concert at the high school played by the Clearfield City Community Band and Choir, and a pool party at the aquatic center, then on the Fourth itself a morning run from Steed Park, the Hometown Parade, an evening festival at Fisher Park and fireworks after dark. The exact dates shift a little each year, so check the city's Fourth of July site in the spring.
The parade route is the best geographic sentence anyone in this city has written down. It begins at City Hall, heads down State Street, then turns up SR-193 to the high school, which is the old diagonal arterial followed by the road to the base: the whole city walked once a year in order. The second half of that route is the Bernard Fisher Highway, and the highway page carries what it is called and why.
Two civic rhythms govern ordinary weeks rather than dates. Every city park is open from five in the morning to midnight, uniformly across all seventeen of them, with the skate park closing at eleven and the pickleball courts running six to eleven. And pavilion reservations open on 1 March for a season that runs 1 May through 30 September, first come first served. The city's parks page is the place to check both, and it is unusually complete for a city this size.
The Clearfield companion
Eight pages, and five of them are about ground the federal government once owned
Everything The Local has written about Clearfield itself: the 841 acres the Navy took and the tax law that gave the district its name, the road across town and the airman it is named for, the downtown being built from nothing beside the commuter platform, the pool the city put up after a tax vote failed, two eleven and a half acre parks with sixteen lit courts between them, sixteen acres with a fourteen thousand square foot skate park on it, and what an address in a city with one municipal bill and no irrigation water actually asks of a household.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Quick answers
Clearfield, answered
That depends on what you want, but here is the honest shape of it. Clearfield is one of the more affordable ways into Davis County, it sits right on Interstate 15 and has its own FrontRunner stop, and it runs a full slate of parks and a year round pool for a city its size. Hill Air Force Base is next door, which is a large employer but also means aircraft noise that varies block by block, and the Freeport Center on the west side moves freight by rail and truck on working days. The middle of the city is older housing, most of it built between the war and the 1980s. Prices and current listings live on the practical city guide, and a Davis County partner agent can walk you through it street by street.
For two federal installations and what they left behind. An air field went up on the eastern edge in 1940, and in the early 1940s the Navy built a supply depot on the western side. The Navy left in 1962 and the depot became the Freeport Center, a large private warehouse and distribution district that is still the biggest employer inside the city limits. Clearfield is also known for what it does not have, which is a historic main street.
Because it grew inward from its edges rather than outward from a center. The air field arrived on the east side and the naval depot on the west, and the grid between them filled in as housing rather than around a commercial core. That is why the city is building a downtown from scratch on transit agency land beside its FrontRunner platform, a project called Clearfield Station.
From a tax term, not a place or a person. A free port is a zone where stored goods are exempt from inventory tax. When the Navy left in the early 1960s, Utah passed a law that let goods be warehoused there without that tax, which is what made the old depot attractive as a distribution center for the western states. The name has described the tax status ever since.
Yes. The base runs along the eastern edge of the city, and SR-193, the road most people take east across town, leads to the base's south entrance. That road is also signed the Bernard Fisher Highway. Because the base is right there, aircraft noise is a real part of life and how much of it you get depends on the block. Gate names and gate hours change and are published by the base, so check them there. The county page carries the gates, the flight paths and the rest.
Yes. Clearfield Station is the commuter rail stop on the west side of the city, off 1200 South, and it is the center of the new downtown the city is building around it. Schedules and fares are set by the Utah Transit Authority, so check current times with UTA before you rely on a connection.
No. The city says in one flat line on its own resident payment page that it does not provide secondary or irrigation water. It bills culinary water, sewer, storm water and garbage on one account, and nothing else. Whether a given lot has a pressurized secondary connection is a property level question that changes a summer bill a lot, and the city does not name a provider, so ask about it at the specific address before you assume either way.
Seventeen named parks, plus a skate park and a dog park set inside two of them, all open from 5:00am to midnight. The largest is Jesse D. Barlow Park at 17 acres, which holds the enclosed dog park at its north end. Bernard F. Fisher Park is 16 acres and carries a 14,000 square foot skate park. Steed is really two parks, North Steed Park and Pond and South Steed Park, at 11.5 acres each, and between them they hold sixteen lit pickleball courts and three sand volleyball courts.
No, they are separate cities, but the line between them is genuinely hard to see. They share a street grid with no visible break, they share the 84015 ZIP code, and both belong to the North Davis Sewer District along with several neighboring cities and Hill Air Force Base itself. A school near the edge even carries a Sunset address. Because the ZIP code does not follow the city line, an address near the boundary is worth checking with the county rather than assuming from the mail, and the same goes for which school a home is assigned to.
Eight pages on a city that was assembled between two fences
Clearfield asks a buyer a short list of questions no other Davis city asks in quite the same way. Which side of the grid an address sits on, because the city line with Sunset runs through a street pattern that does not show it. Whether the lot has a secondary irrigation connection, because the city does not supply one and does not name who does. What the district on the west side sounds like on a working weekday, because it moves freight by rail and by truck. And how close a street sits to the road that runs east to the base. Tell me what you are weighing, and I will introduce you to a Davis County partner agent who works this end of the county and stay on the file for the financing side.
Or call Scott: (435) 357-4345or send Scott a message
Keep going
Continue your Clearfield research
Eight more doors into Clearfield, chosen for what this page covers.
Questions about Clearfield?
Call Scott, send a message, or find out what your Clearfield home is worth. No pressure, no obligation.
Referral Disclosure: For moves outside Southern Utah, I can connect you with trusted local agents. If you choose to work with one, their brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee from their commission. This costs you nothing extra, and you are never obligated to use my referral.