City Sunset, Davis County
A small, older city at the north end of Davis County, on Interstate 15 beside Hill Air Force Base
Sunset, the small city at the top of Davis County
Sunset is a compact city of about 5,400 people at the very north end of Davis County, right on Interstate 15 about half an hour north of Salt Lake City and fifteen minutes south of Ogden. It is one of the oldest and smallest cities on this stretch of the freeway: a grid of numbered streets mostly built in the 1950s and 1960s, boxed in by a railroad on the west and by Hill Air Force Base on the east. This is the hub for everything The Local has written about Sunset, from how it got its name to what an address here asks of a household, and it hands the base itself off to the county page that covers it in full.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
Sunset is a small city at the north end of Davis County, on Interstate 15 about half an hour north of Salt Lake City and fifteen minutes south of Ogden. It is easiest to picture by its edges: a railroad and the commuter rail line run down the west side, Hill Air Force Base fills the east side, the city of Clearfield closes it off to the south, and the Davis and Weber county line is its north boundary, which makes Sunset the northernmost city in the county. Most of the housing is a grid of numbered streets built in the 1950s and 1960s, so homes here are older and modest rather than new. The city runs its own police department and three parks, and it shares both its ZIP code and its street numbering with Clearfield next door. For a buyer it is one of the more affordable footholds in Davis County, close to the base, the freeway and the train, as long as you go in knowing the homes are decades old and the city is essentially full.
Start here
A small grid with a freeway down one side and an Air Force base filling the other
The quickest way to understand Sunset is to picture Interstate 15 running north to south through it. West of the freeway is the city almost everyone means when they say Sunset: a tidy grid of numbered streets, most of the houses built in the 1950s and 1960s, with Main Street a block or so off the freeway. East of the freeway, still inside the city limits, is Hill Air Force Base. About a quarter of Sunset is base ground you cannot drive into, and the city limits and the base page lays out exactly where the line runs.
The other edges finish the picture. The west boundary is a railroad, the same set of tracks the community drew its line along when it split from Clinton and took the name Sunset, and the commuter train still runs on it, though there is no station inside the city. The south side is the city of Clearfield, close enough that Sunset shares Clearfield's ZIP code and even borrows its street numbering. The north side is the Davis and Weber county line, so the next town over sits in a different county, and that makes Sunset the northernmost city in Davis County.
The Sunset pages keep to one rule: they cover streets, houses, parks, the railroad and the town's history, never the people who work at the base. Hill Air Force Base is a neighbor and a landmark here, and the county page carries its gates, its flight line and its employment as published facts. Everything on the Sunset pages stays on the near side of that line, and the base guide is where the rest of it lives.
Getting around
One freeway exit, a state highway for a main street, and the nearest train just over the line
The road map here is small enough to learn in a minute, and worth learning before you house hunt. Here is roughly what the common drives look like from the middle of town.
| Destination | Distance | Typical drive |
|---|---|---|
| Salt Lake City | About 25 miles | About 30 minutes on I-15 |
| Ogden | About 10 miles | About 15 minutes |
| Salt Lake City International Airport | About 23 miles | About 30 minutes |
Distances and times are approximate and depend on traffic and your exact street.
Interstate 15 gives the city its own door at exit 335. Main Street runs north to south a short block west of the freeway and is signed State Route 126, which is the one route number to hold onto: if you have seen it listed as SR-26, that is a mix-up, because SR-26 is Riverdale Road up in Weber County and never reaches Sunset. The rest of the grid is numbered streets, and because the numbering is Clearfield's, an address here reads as something like 1300 North rather than counting from a center of its own. The Main Street page is about what the freeway did to that street when it went in.
The commuter train, FrontRunner, runs on the railroad along the west edge of the city, but there is no station inside Sunset. The nearest stops are in Clearfield to the south and Roy just over the county line to the north, so a car free trip to Salt Lake City or Ogden is a real option, it just starts with a short drive to the platform. One thing to weigh plainly: with the base along the whole east side, aircraft noise is a genuine part of life here, and how much of it a given home gets depends a lot on the block. The honest way to judge it is to stand on the street on a weekday and listen.
The long view
Four names, three women and a railroad, then a base and a freeway that remade the town
Before it was Sunset this ground carried a string of plain descriptive names, Sandridge among them, for a dry, sage covered delta laid down by the Weber River with no natural stream running through it. Cattle grazed here from the 1850s, but the first settlers did not arrive until the 1870s, when the James Hill family began farming near what is now the heart of the old town. They hauled drinking water from the Weber River and sank deep wells, and the area only really took off once irrigation water arrived with the completion of the Davis and Weber canal in 1884.
The name came around 1916. The community's first bishop asked three local women to find a new one, and one of them suggested Sunset after a sunset she had watched the evening before. The other two agreed, and shortly after, the community separated from Clinton along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. That line is still the city's western boundary today, which is the neat part: the edge three neighbors drew along a railroad more than a century ago is the same edge a title company draws now, and the name page carries the whole story with the people in it.
Two later turns built the town you would drive through today. Sunset was incorporated as a city in 1935, and then Hill Air Force Base went in directly to the east in the 1940s, which shifted the place from farms to houses almost overnight. The 1960s brought a wave of new homes and the freeway, and putting Interstate 15 down the middle meant taking the east side of Main Street with it. That is why the street has a west side and almost no east side, and it is a rare town whose real founding story is the story of four hard edges closing in around it.
A dry farming delta, then four names, then a town that drew its line along a railroad, then a base on one side and a freeway down the middle. Sunset is a small place with an unusually clear shape.
The county
Of the county's seven big subjects, Sunset really touches just one
Davis County keeps seven subjects written once for all fifteen cities instead of fifteen times over. Sunset has a genuine stake in exactly one of them, and it is an unusually close one, because the subject sits inside the city line rather than beyond it.
The installation itself
Hill Air Force Base
What the base is, what it flies, how its gates work and what its published noise contours mean for a home nearby, written once for the whole county.
Read the guide
This city's door onto it
The city limits and the base
Not a gate, but a city boundary drawn inside the base, with about a quarter of Sunset sitting on the far side of it.
Read the pageThe county's other six subjects are a drive from Sunset rather than a feature of it, and it is more useful to say so than to pretend otherwise. Antelope Island is reached from the causeway over in Syracuse, several miles south. The Legacy Parkway Trail runs through the south end of the county with no segment near here. The bench canyons are miles to the east, past the base and across the valley. Farmington Bay and its birding are at the far south end. The county's walkable water edges are ponds and reservoirs in other cities, and Sunset's own three parks are neighborhood parks on the grid with no water in them. The Davis County hub indexes all seven, so the choice stays yours.
If you only have an hour
A street with one side, a park with a long history, a city line you cannot cross and a railroad you can stand on
First thing
Stand on Main Street
Face east and the interstate is right behind the buildings rather than across a field. It is the quickest way to feel how the freeway reshaped the old street. Free, about ten minutes.
The Main Street page
Mid morning
Walk into Central Park
The city's oldest address is now its largest park, on the same ground the first settler family once farmed. Free, about an hour.
The parks pageMidday
Find where the city ends
It does not stop at the freeway. It runs a little past it, on a line drawn inside the base, which is a genuinely strange thing to trace on a map. Free, half an hour.
The boundary page
Late afternoon
Stand by the railroad
The tracks on the west edge are the line the town drew to separate from Clinton, and the commuter train still runs on it. Free, about twenty minutes.
The name pageThe year here
One summer celebration, a steady council calendar, and a green waste season that runs spring to late fall
Sunset's own celebration is Sunset City Fun Days, a summer weekend the city puts on with a parade, a fun run, a community breakfast, a car show and music, held at one of the city parks. The dates move a little from year to year, so check the city's calendar in early summer if you want to plan around it. Beyond that one weekend, the city's year is mostly practical: the council meets on the first and third Tuesday of each month at City Hall on 1300 North, and meetings are open to the public.
The one seasonal utility worth knowing about is green waste collection, which the city runs from spring through late fall and pauses over the winter, while trash and recycling alternate week to week on the city calendar. For anything with a rule attached, a fireworks question, a parking question or a pet question, the city's ordinances are online and are the place to get a straight answer rather than a summary. What a home here costs, and what the monthly city bill looks like, are covered on the Sunset city guide and on the moving to Sunset page.
The Sunset companion
Six pages on one small city, and most of them start from the same freeway line
Everything The Local has written about Sunset itself: the quarter of the city that is base ground, the Main Street the freeway cut in half, the three women who named the town and the railroad that drew its line, its three city parks, a ranked short list of things to do, and what an address here really asks of a household.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Quick answers
Sunset, answered
That depends on what you want, and here is what the place actually is. Sunset is a small, compact city at the north end of Davis County, a grid of numbered streets mostly built in the 1950s and 1960s, so most homes here are older and modest rather than new. It sits right on Interstate 15, about half an hour north of Salt Lake City and fifteen minutes south of Ogden, next to Hill Air Force Base, with the commuter train running just past the west edge and stations in Clearfield and Roy. The city keeps its own police department and three city parks. Because most of the housing is decades old, the smart move is to weigh a specific home on its roof, windows, wiring and plumbing rather than the town in the abstract.
The name comes from around 1916. The community's first bishop asked three local women to find a new name for the area, which had been called Clinton, and one of them suggested Sunset after a sunset she had watched the night before. The other two agreed, and soon after, the community separated from Clinton along the railroad tracks that still form the city's western edge today. The full story, with the names, is on the how Sunset got its name page.
It is more than next to it. About a quarter of the city, everything east of Interstate 15, is Hill Air Force Base ground that sits inside Sunset's own city limits rather than beyond them. You cannot drive into that part; it is closed federal ground. The residential city, the part with homes and streets, is the three quarters west of the freeway. What the base is, how its gates work and what it means for a home nearby all live on the Hill Air Force Base guide.
Yes. Hill Air Force Base runs along the entire east side of the city, so aircraft noise is a real part of life here, and it is a fair thing to weigh before you buy. How much any one home gets depends a lot on the block and the day. The honest way to check is simple: stand on the street you are considering on a weekday and listen. A local agent who works this end of the county will know the pattern, and the base guide covers the flight line in more detail.
It is State Route 126. Main Street runs north to south through the city just west of Interstate 15, and it is signed SR-126. SR-26 is a different road entirely, Riverdale Road up in Weber County, and it does not reach Sunset. If you have seen SR-26 listed for Sunset's Main Street, that is a mix-up; the route through town is SR-126.
No. Sunset shares the ZIP code 84015 with Clearfield, and the eastern base area uses 84056. The street numbering is Clearfield's too, which is why a Sunset address reads as a number like 1300 North rather than counting from a center of its own. Your mail, your ZIP and your street numbers all point at Clearfield, even though Sunset is its own city with its own government.
Small. Sunset covers about a mile and a half of ground at the very top of Davis County. It runs a little under two miles from its south line to its north line and less than a mile across, and about a quarter of even that is the Air Force ground east of the freeway. It is one of the most compact cities in the county.
Settlers arrived in the 1870s, when the James Hill family farmed here, and the town was incorporated as a city in 1935. The area got its name, Sunset, around 1916, but that is the naming and the split from Clinton, not the founding. Irrigation water reached the valley when the Davis and Weber canal was finished in 1884, and the town shifted from farms to houses after Hill Air Force Base was built to its east in the 1940s.
Not really. Sunset holds around 5,400 residents and has stayed close to that for years, and the reason is space rather than anything else. The city is boxed in on every side: a railroad on the west, the city of Clearfield on the south, the Davis and Weber county line on the north, and Hill Air Force Base on the east. With almost no open land left inside those edges, what building happens is mostly small infill on lots that already had a home, not new subdivisions.
Weighing an address in Sunset or anywhere in north Davis County?
Sunset asks a buyer a short, specific set of questions, and most of them are not the ones a listing answers. What decade was this house built, and what does that mean for the roof and the systems. Which side of the freeway does it sit on. How much of the base do you hear from this block. Tell me what you are weighing, and I will connect 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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Continue your Sunset research
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