Davis County North Salt Lake
The southernmost city in Davis County, and the youngest of its fifteen
North Salt Lake, and the bench it was built on
The hill town at the south door of Davis County: a Wasatch bench climbing on the east, flats running out toward the Jordan River on the west, and a working industrial corridor along the freeway between them. About 21,907 people at the 2020 census on roughly 8.5 square miles, with the whole southern line shared with Salt Lake City and downtown about ten minutes away. Seven pages on the city itself, from two documented landslides to the one refinery that is genuinely inside the city line.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
North Salt Lake is the hill town at the south end of Davis County, and the shape of the place is the whole story. The east side climbs a Wasatch bench, the west side runs flat toward the Jordan River, and a working industrial corridor threads the seam along the freeway between them. It is the southernmost of the county's fifteen cities and the youngest of them, it shares its entire south line with Salt Lake City, and downtown Salt Lake is about ten minutes away. This hub is the map to seven deeper pages on the city, and it hands the shared county subjects, the island in the lake, the wetlands and the air base, to the Davis County pages that all fifteen towns share.
Buying or selling in North Salt Lake?
The shape of it
Four kinds of ground stacked between a river and a mountain
You can cross this city in about ten minutes and pass through four different places on the way. On the east is the bench, the Wasatch foothill shelf where Eaglewood lays out its golf course and its view streets above the valley. In the middle is the original townsite along old US-89, Main Street and Center Street, the 1946 footprint and the rings that grew around it. On the west are the flats, old Jordan River lake bed as level as a table, where Foxboro strings together a run of neighborhood parks and wetland trails. And along the freeway runs the corridor, the seam of refinery, gravel pits and rail that has been zoned for work since before the town was a town.
Bench or flats is the distinction that ends up mattering most. The east bench sits higher and catches the long view back across the valley, and it comes with a document set: city code requires a geologic hazard study before you build in the mapped hazard areas, and fireworks are banned east of Orchard Drive and south of Eagleridge Drive, a wildfire line drawn straight through the middle of a city. The flats sit lower and closer to the freeway and the working corridor. The single cleanest sentence anyone has written about living here is that fireworks map, because it draws the bench in one line.
The valley floor here is a little over 4,200 feet and the bench streets climb several hundred feet above it. The 2020 census counted 21,907 people. Estimates since then run higher, into the mid-20,000s, and most of the difference is the Val Verda annexation, which added ground the census had not counted; on the same boundaries the city's population actually slipped a little in 2024. One last piece of geography trips people up: North Salt Lake borders the state capital along its whole south line, yet it is counted in the Ogden and Clearfield metropolitan area, not the Salt Lake City one.
There are two documented landslides on this bench, not one. The Parkway Drive slide let go early on 5 August 2014, a mass about 500 feet across, and it destroyed the house at 739 Parkway Drive. The older Springhill slide two miles north moved slowly and took 18 homes over about fifteen years; the city bought and cleared the affected lots, and the ground is now a public geologic park with a loop trail and interpretive plaques. Both sit on the same stack of lake gravel over clay, and both pages tell it plainly, without the scare, so a buyer on the bench knows what the ground asks and what the hazard study is for.
Why the town is here
A town that incorporated because a developer bought the spring water
Most founding stories are ceremonial. This one is a water fight with a date on it. Most of the early homes and businesses sat below the old highway and drew from privately owned springs on the hills to the south, right on the county line. In 1946 a developer bought that hillside ground to build houses and took the spring rights along with it, which left the landowners below with no additional water. Some of them formed a committee, drew up a petition to form a town so the water system could be brought under local control, and on 3 September 1946 the county granted town status to about 456 acres. The springs are why the place exists, why one of its parks is called Tunnel Springs, and part of why the bench above later slid.
Cattle got here before anyone else. In 1895 the Salt Lake Union Stockyards opened near the railroad tracks, and in 1916 the Cudahy Meat Packing Company took over a building on Center Street below them; the plant did well enough that the street was known for years as Cudahy Lane before it went back to Center Street, and it closed in 1972. The post office at the tracks is where the name North Salt Lake came from, on ground that had until then been called South Bountiful. The refinery on Center Street came on line in 1948, two years after the town incorporated, so the plant and the municipality are almost exactly the same age. The refinery did not arrive next to a town; they grew up together.
Farm to town, hillside to river, North Salt Lake changes character four times in ten minutes.
The county's own subjects
Four things this city touches that belong to the whole county
Davis County carries a set of region pages written once for all fifteen cities. North Salt Lake genuinely touches four of them, at a trailhead, a ridge line, a pond and a day out. They are handed over here rather than retold from a doorstep that is not theirs.
The paved one
The Legacy Parkway Trail
Thirteen flat, paved miles through five cities, with its southern trailhead here on Center Street.
Read
The mountain
The Davis canyons
The bench canyons as a set, the Skyline Drive spine, and the shoreline trail that links their mouths.
Read
The water
The lakeside parks
The county's pond map, where the city's own fishing water at Eagleridge fits into context.
Read
Days out
Family weekends in Davis County
What a paid day out costs across the county, including the recreation center this city shares.
ReadThree more Davis subjects sit north of here, the nearest about half an hour away. The island in the lake, the managed wetlands and the air force base and its museum are all real reasons to drive north out of this city, and none of them is a doorstep amenity from a street in North Salt Lake. They are written once at county level for all fifteen towns, and this hub points at them rather than describing them from twenty five miles away. They all sit on the Davis County hub, alongside a companion for each town.
The North Salt Lake companion
Seven pages on the city itself, from the bench down to the river
Everything The Local has written about North Salt Lake itself: the ranked things to do, the slow landslide the city turned into a public park, the sudden one that produced an ordinance, the city's hillside park, the two neighborhoods that stand for the bench and the flats, and what living beside a working corridor really asks of a household.
The ranked list
Top 6 things to do
Six ranked picks, from the top of the bench down to the Jordan River.
Read
The slow one
Springhill Geologic Park
A small north-bench park laid across a slow landslide, with the fault story on plaques.
Read
The sudden one
The Parkway Drive landslide
The 2014 hillside slide, and the hazard homework a bench purchase now carries.
Read
The trail door
Tunnel Springs Park
The city's own hillside park at the top of the Eaglepointe streets, and its trail door.
Read
The bench
Eaglewood
The golf course and the view streets on the east bench, above the valley.
Read
The flats
Foxboro
The flat, planned west side off the bench, with its string of neighborhood parks.
Read
Moving here
The refinery corridor
What the working corridor along Beck Street is really like to live beside.
ReadWeighing a move, not a visit?
The North Salt Lake city guide carries the prices, the schools, the taxes and the live listings, bench and flats.
Quick answers
North Salt Lake, answered
Three things. The refineries you can see from Interstate 15, though only one of the five plants on that seam sits inside the city line. A Wasatch bench that has slipped twice, once slowly over about fifteen years and once suddenly on an August morning in 2014. And being the closest Davis County address to downtown Salt Lake City, about 7.6 miles and roughly ten minutes away.
At the south end of Davis County, sharing its entire southern boundary with Salt Lake City, with Woods Cross to the north and Bountiful to the northeast. It covers about 8.5 square miles that run from old Jordan River lake bed on the west up onto the Wasatch foothills on the east. Despite bordering the capital, it is counted in the Ogden and Clearfield metropolitan area rather than the Salt Lake City one.
Over water. Most homes and businesses sat below the old highway and drew from privately owned springs on the hills to the south. In 1946 a developer bought that hillside ground and the spring rights with it, which left the landowners below with no more water. They petitioned to form a town so the water system could be brought under local control, and the county granted town status to about 456 acres on 3 September 1946.
The 2020 census counted 21,907. Estimates since then run into the mid-20,000s, and most of the difference is the Val Verda annexation, which added ground the census had not counted. On the same boundaries the city's population actually slipped a little in 2024, so the figure you see depends on which territory is being measured.
Two of them, on the same bench. The Parkway Drive slide let go early on 5 August 2014, a mass about 500 feet across, and it destroyed the house at 739 Parkway Drive. The older Springhill slide two miles north moved slowly and took 18 homes over about fifteen years; the city bought and cleared the affected lots with a federal grant, and the ground is now a public geologic park.
One. Big West Oil runs the plant at 333 West Center Street, inside the city line. Four other refineries sit close by in three different cities: the plant named for Woods Cross is actually in West Bountiful, Silver Eagle Refining is in Woods Cross, and the Marathon and Chevron plants are across the south line in Salt Lake City. The count of five on this seam is right, and the geography gets printed wrong all the time.
Most of it is uphill. Springhill Geologic Park carries a loop trail and plaques laid across a landslide. Tunnel Springs Park is the city's own hillside park and a door onto the foothill trails. Eaglewood is the golf course and the view streets on the east bench. Down on the flats, Foxboro strings together a run of neighborhood parks and wetland trails, and the county's paved Legacy Parkway trail has a trailhead here on Center Street.
No. The nearest is the Woods Cross station at 750 South 800 West, a few minutes from most of the city, and the four FrontRunner stations serving Davis County are Woods Cross, Farmington, Layton and Clearfield. UTA bus route 417 also runs through Woods Cross, North Salt Lake and Rose Park, linking FrontRunner with the TRAX Green Line.
That is really a housing question, and it comes down to which side of the city you are on. A bench address brings hillside geology and a reading list of hazard studies, plus a fireworks ban east of Orchard Drive. A west side address sits nearer the working corridor, where odor days happen and the nearest train is in the next city. The city guide carries the prices, taxes, schools and utilities, and a Davis County partner agent can walk the specific streets with you.
A city where the address decides the homework
Visiting here is easy; buying here is specific. A bench purchase brings a reading list a flats purchase does not, the geologic hazard study, the seller disclosures, the hazard mapping for that exact parcel, and how a policy treats earth movement. A west side purchase brings different homework, about the corridor, the wind and how far the station really is. Tell me which streets you are circling and I will put you with 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
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