The name Sunset
The name came first, and the railroad drew the boundary after
How Sunset got its name, and the railroad that drew the line after
In about 1916 the community's first bishop asked three women to rename the area, and one of them chose Sunset for the sky the evening before. The town separated from Clinton along the railroad soon after, and that 1916 line is still the western city limit today. Here are the four names that came first, the settlement date almost everyone gets wrong, and why the story you have heard about the Great Salt Lake is not the town's own.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
In about 1916 the community's first bishop asked three women to find a new name for the area, and one of them chose Sunset after the sky she had watched the evening before. The town separated from Clinton along the railroad soon after, so the name came first and the boundary followed it, which is the reverse of the story most people have heard.
The naming
Two tellings of one evening, and only the shorter one has the lake
The fuller version goes like this. In about 1916 the community's first bishop, Orlando Hadlock, asked three women, Elizabeth Martin, Jessie Toone and Rose Randall, to find a new name for the area. One of them asked the others whether they had noticed the sunset the evening before, suggested the town be called Sunset, and the other two agreed. Soon after, the community separated from Clinton along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. Four people, a task, a suggestion, an agreement, and then a boundary.
That is the reverse of the version you are more likely to hear, which has residents splitting off from Clinton first and then naming the place for the sunsets over the Great Salt Lake. The shorter, better known retelling is where the lake comes from. The town's own fuller history puts the sunset the night before, not the water to the west, and never mentions the lake at all. Both are the town's own words, and both are kept here rather than one being chosen.
What the two agree on is the year, about 1916, and the order: a name, then a separation. If you want the lake in the story it is the short version, and it drops the three women. If you want the three women and the evening sky it is the long version, and it has no lake. Either way the town was named before its edge was drawn, and the edge is the more durable half.
Before the name
Sandridge, the range, the basin and summit, then Clinton, and only then this
The town had four names before it had one that stuck. The Sunset and Clinton area was first known as Sandridge, the range, the basin, and summit. The reason for the plain, dry names is in the ground itself. This is the flat delta the Weber River built, fertile soil with no natural surface water, undulating and dry, covered in sage brush, rabbit brush and grass. Good soil with nothing to water it.
That landform is the whole reason the early dates run the way they do. The land was grazed as early as 1854, about twenty years before anyone lived on it. The first settlers, the James Hill family, arrived in the 1870s and farmed at about 85 West 1800 North. Others followed, the Terry, Hadlock, Elmer, Burnett, Steele and Mitchell families among them, and they hauled drinking water from the Weber River before sinking wells a hundred feet deep. The town dates its real arrival not to the year anyone turned up but to 1884, when the Davis and Weber canal reached the delta and, in its own word, the area blossomed.
Then, in about 1896, the area took the name Clinton, which is now the separate city immediately west across the railroad. Only in about 1916 did the eastern part take the name Sunset and split away. So the town on the other side of the western boundary still carries the name this place used for its first twenty years.
The dates that matter
The boundary
The line three sentences of history describe is the line a title company draws today
The community separated from Clinton along the railroad tracks. That sounds like a detail about the past. It is not. Sunset's western city limit and the rail corridor run together the full length of the town, the same line to within a stone's throw. The corridor carries freight and commuter trains alike, and a boundary drawn along a railroad in about 1916 is still the line between two cities today. The commuter train runs down it several times a day without stopping in either.
The town says as much itself, in the present tense, with commuter rail running through Sunset alongside the railroad line between Sunset and Clinton. That is what makes the name and the boundary one story rather than two. Three women chose a name; the community drew its edge along the only permanent thing on the west side, a railroad; and the railroad is still there, still carrying trains, still holding the line. A hundred and ten years is a long time for a quick decision about where one town stops to survive without a single amendment, and almost nothing else here has lasted that long unchanged.
There is a small coincidence across the county line worth one sentence. The nearest commuter platform north of here, in Roy, sits on Sandridge Drive, and Sandridge was the first of the four names this area carried before it was Sunset. A name that Sunset dropped survives on a street in the next town up. It is not a claim that the station is named for anything in Sunset; it is a genuine echo and nothing more. The page on moving here has the practical version of where the nearest platforms actually are.
The details
Three women chose the name, a railroad drew the boundary, and the train still runs down the line. In this town those are not three facts. They are one.
After the name
Incorporated in 1935, remade by a base in the 1940s, and largely built by 1970
The town was incorporated in 1935. Two things then made it what it is. Hill Air Force Base rose directly to the east in the 1940s and turned Sunset from farm ground into a residential town. Through the 1960s and 70s came a wave of house building, the same wave that filled much of Davis County. And the 1960s brought the interstate down the middle of town, which is a story of its own.
The county tax roll bears the timeline out. Of the Sunset homes that carry a year built, roughly a third date from the 1950s and another quarter from the 1960s, with the great majority of the town standing before 1970. A place whose written history and whose tax roll agree that closely is unusual, and worth trusting.
The population line is the odd one. The town counted about 5,200 people in 2000, dipped slightly by 2010, rose to about 5,475 in 2020, and has eased back a little since. So Sunset lost residents across one decade, gained them across the next, and is easing off again, which is not the steady climb most Wasatch Front towns show. It is the shape of a place with almost nowhere left to build, where homes change hands rather than multiply.
One last thing about dates, because the temptation is obvious. There is no round anniversary here in 2026. Ninety years from incorporation fell in 2025 and has passed, and the centennial is 2035. The 1916 naming turned a hundred and ten this year, which is not a number anyone marks. If a flyer or a listing offers you a Sunset anniversary in 2026, the arithmetic does not support one.
Three things people repeat about how Sunset began do not hold up. Sunset was not settled around 1916; settlers were farming here in the 1870s, and 1916 is the naming and the split from Clinton. The Great Salt Lake belongs only to the shorter, better known version of the naming, not to the town's fuller history, so anyone leaning on the lake should say which telling they mean. And the third woman's surname is genuinely unsettled, spelled both Randal and Randall in the town's own records, so both stand rather than one being chosen for a family that would know better.
What it means to a buyer
A boundary a hundred and ten years old that still decides which city bills you
For a buyer the useful part of this is not the story, it is the line. Sunset and Clinton are separated by a rail corridor and nothing else, no river, no ridge, no arterial, no change in the streets to tell you which side you are on. Two houses a few hundred feet apart across that corridor sit in two different cities, with two councils, two police arrangements and two sets of ordinances.
The other three edges are each a different kind of edge, and it is worth knowing all four. North of the line is Roy, which is in Weber County, so Sunset's north boundary is a county line. South is Clearfield, whose ZIP code and street numbering this whole town borrows. West across the railroad is Clinton, the name this place once carried. And east across the freeway is federal ground that still sits inside Sunset's own limits.
What that adds up to in practice is simple. In Sunset you should never assume the city from an address, a postmark or a map pin. Take it from the county assessor for the exact parcel, every time, before you make an offer. That single habit answers the boundary question here, and it is the same habit the rest of a Sunset address rewards.
None of this puts a number on anything, and that is on purpose. What a home costs, what sells on which block, what the city budget runs to, all of that lives on the practical Sunset city guide. The question answered here is smaller and much older: where a town got its name and its outline, and why both have outlasted almost everything else about it.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Quick answers
The name, answered
In about 1916 the community's first bishop, Orlando Hadlock, asked three women, Elizabeth Martin, Jessie Toone and Rose Randall, to find a new name for the area. One of them asked whether the others had noticed the sunset the evening before, suggested the town be called Sunset, and the other two agreed. Soon after, the community separated from Clinton along the railroad tracks. So the name was chosen first and the boundary followed it, which is the reverse of the usual telling.
That is the shorter, better known version, and it is worth attributing rather than repeating flat. It says several women in the area were watching the sun set over the Great Salt Lake to the west and decided to call the place Sunset. The town's own fuller history is longer, names all three women, puts the sunset the evening before rather than over the lake, and never mentions the lake at all. Both are the town's own words, and the lake belongs only to the shorter one.
Four things, then a fifth. The Sunset and Clinton area was first known as Sandridge, the range, the basin, and summit. Then in about 1896 the area was named Clinton, which is now the separate city immediately west across the railroad. Only in about 1916 did the eastern part take the name Sunset and split away. So the town on the other side of the western boundary still carries the name this place used for its first twenty years.
The 1870s. Cattle grazed this ground as early as 1854, but the first settlers, the James Hill family, did not arrive until the 1870s and farmed at about 85 West 1800 North. Other early families followed, the Terry, Hadlock, Elmer, Burnett, Steele and Mitchell households among them. A settlement date of about 1916 is in circulation and it is wrong: 1916 is the naming and the split from Clinton, not the founding.
1935. There is no round anniversary in 2026: ninety years fell in 2025 and has passed, and the centennial is 2035. The 1916 naming turned a hundred and ten this year, which is not a number anyone marks. If a flyer or a listing offers you a Sunset anniversary in 2026, the arithmetic does not support one. The two dates worth carrying are 1935 for the city and about 1916 for the name and the boundary.
Yes, and closely. Sunset's western city limit and the rail corridor run together the full length of the town, the same line to within a stone's throw. The corridor carries both freight and commuter trains, and the town describes it in the present tense, with commuter rail running through Sunset alongside the railroad line between Sunset and Clinton. A boundary drawn along a railroad in about 1916 is still the line between the two cities today.
Because of what the ground is. This is the flat delta the Weber River built, fertile soil with no natural surface water, dry and covered in sage brush, rabbit brush and grass. Good soil with nothing to water it. The first households hauled drinking water from the Weber River and later sank wells a hundred feet deep, and the area only blossomed once the Davis and Weber canal reached the delta in 1884. That canal date is the town's own figure and is worth confirming at the canal company.
Both, and the town's own records do not settle it. The name appears as Rose Randal in one place and Mrs. Randall in the next, so both spellings sit side by side in the same account. Both are kept here rather than one being chosen quietly, because a family name is the kind of thing a descendant will know better than a planning office did. If it matters to you, the city recorder is the place to ask.
No. The line runs along the western city limit and does not stop in Sunset. The nearest stations are Roy, in Weber County, and Clearfield, in Davis County. There is a small coincidence worth one sentence: the Roy station sits on Sandridge Drive, and Sandridge was the first of the four names this area carried before it was Sunset. That is a dropped name surviving on a street in the next town up, not a claim that the station is named for anything in Sunset.
A name chosen in one evening, and a boundary that has not moved in a hundred and ten years
The naming story is charming, and the line underneath it is the part that matters to a buyer. Sunset and Clinton are separated by a rail corridor and nothing else, with no river, no ridge and no change in the streets to tell you which side you are on. North of town is a county line, south is the city whose ZIP code and street numbers this whole town uses, and east across the freeway is federal ground inside Sunset's own limits. Never take a city from an address or a map pin here. Tell me which streets you are weighing, and I will introduce you to a Davis County partner agent who can pull the parcel record with you.
Or call Scott: (435) 357-4345or send Scott a message
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