The name Sunset
The name came first and the boundary came second, which is the reverse of the story in circulation
How Sunset got its name, and the railroad that drew the line after.
In about 1916 the community's first bishop asked Elizabeth Martin, Jessie Toone and Rose Randall to find a new name for the area, one of them proposed Sunset after the sunset she had watched the night before, and the community separated from Clinton along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks shortly afterwards. That is the city's own adopted plan, and the Great Salt Lake is nowhere in it. This is the four names that came before, the settlement date almost everyone gets wrong, and the fact that the 1916 line is still the western city limit.
Sunset sits at the top of Davis County, a long drive north of the Southern Utah ground I actually work, so these pages are researched rather than lived. What is on them was read where it is issued: the city's own website and the general plan its council adopted, published on the state public notice website; the North Davis Fire District and the North Davis Sewer District; the Davis County Assessor's parcel roll; the Census Bureau's geocoder and its 2020 block file; and the state's own roads and municipal boundary layers. Every figure carries the date it was checked. A Davis County partner agent takes the ground level work.
The live question
Was Sunset named for a sunset over the Great Salt Lake, and did the name come before the town or after it?
The name came first, and the lake is not in the city's own governing account of it. Section 2.3 of the general plan the council adopted on 15 November 2022 says: "In approximately 1916, Orlando Hadlock, the communities' first LDS Bishop, asked Elizabeth Martin, Jessie Toone, and Rose Randal to find a new name for the area. Mrs. Randall asked if they had noticed the beautiful sunset the night before. Mrs. Randall suggested that the town be called Sunset, Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Toone agreed. Shortly after, the community separated from Clinton along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks."
Four named people, a task, a suggestion, an agreement, and only then a boundary. That is the reverse of the version in circulation, which has residents separating from Clinton and then naming the place for the view. It is also more specific than the version on the city's own website, which says several ladies living in the area were viewing the colourful sunset over the Great Salt Lake, were impressed with the beauty of the sun setting over the lake to the west, and decided to name the area Sunset. That shorter retelling is where the lake comes from, and the adopted plan does not mention it.
Both are the city's own words, published by the same government, and this page prints them both rather than picking. If you want the lake in the story, it is the website's version and it drops the three names. If you want the three names and the sunset of the night before, it is the adopted plan's version and it has no lake in it. What both agree on is the year, about 1916, and the sequence: a name, then a separation.
The sequence, in numbers
1870s
when the city says settlers first arrived
1884
the canal completion the city credits for everything after
1916
the naming, and the separation that followed it
1935
the year Sunset City was incorporated
Before the name
Sandridge, the range, the basin and summit, then Clinton, and only then this.
The city's history section opens with a sentence most towns would not write about themselves, which is that this area had four names before it had one that stuck. Set them against the dated events around them and you get the whole first century of the place in a single column.
| When | What it was called or what happened | The city's own words | What it rests on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Before settlement | Sandridge, the range, the basin, and summit | The Sunset City and Clinton area was first known as Sandridge, the range, the basin, and summit | The general plan's community history. The city's website repeats the same four with different capitalisation |
| As early as 1854 | Grazing ground, not a settlement | As early as 1854, the land was being used to graze and feed cattle | The same section. Note that this predates any settler here by roughly twenty years |
| The 1870s | The James Hill family arrives and farms at approximately 85 West 1800 North | The area did not receive settlers until the 1870's when the James Hill family arrived | The same section, which also names the Peter Terry, Chauncy Hadlock, Mark Elmer, James Burnett, Thomas Steele, James Mitchell and Durban Terry families |
| 1884 | Irrigation water arrives with the completion of the Davis and Weber canal | The area blossomed when irrigation water became readily available at the completion of the Davis-Weber canal in 1884 | The same section. Before it, households hauled drinking water from the Weber River and sank wells a hundred feet deep |
| About 1896 | The area is named Clinton | In approximately 1896, the area was named Clinton | The same section. Clinton is now the city immediately west of the Sunset boundary |
| About 1916 | A bishop asks three women for a name, and the separation follows along the railroad | Shortly after, the community separated from Clinton along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks | The same section. The order is name first, boundary second |
| 1935 | Sunset City is incorporated | Sunset City was incorporated in 1935 | The same section, in a single flat sentence with no detail attached to it |
Every row is from section 2.3 of the Sunset City General Plan as revised 15 November 2022, read on the Utah Public Notice Website on 16 August 2026. The 1884 canal completion is the city's own claim and is worth confirming at the canal company or the state water rights division before anyone prints it as a flat fact; everything else in the column is the city stating its own history in its own adopted document.
Why the landform is the whole reason for the early dates
The same section carries the geology in two sentences and they explain the rest: the land is an alluvial delta formed by the Weber River, with fertile soil and no natural surface water, described as undulating and dry, covered with sage brush, rabbit brush and grass. Good ground with nothing to water it. That is why the area was grazed for twenty years before anyone lived on it, why the first households hauled drinking water from a river a few miles off and then sank hundred foot wells, and why the city dates its own arrival as a real place to the year a canal reached it rather than to the year anyone turned up.
It also explains what this town is not. There is no creek through Sunset, no canyon above it, no bench, no spring and no lake edge inside the line. It sits at roughly 4,500 to 4,540 feet on flat delta ground, about ten miles west of the mountain front. Almost every other Davis County town on The Local has a canyon mouth or a water edge in it somewhere. This one has a railroad on one side and a freeway down the middle, and both of them are on other pages of this companion.
The details
Getting there
There is no viewpoint to send anyone to, so the practical route is simply west. From City Hall at 200 West 1300 North, run west on 1300 North or on any of the numbered streets and they stop at the corridor, because the corridor is where the city stops. The clearest way to understand what you are looking at is to notice that the same alignment is the city limit, the county's rail line and the boundary a community drew in about 1916, and that the commuter train passing on it does not stop anywhere in Sunset.
Before you go
- This is an active rail corridor rather than a park or a trail. Look at it from the street end and leave it at that.
- The nearest commuter rail platforms are in Clearfield and in Roy, and the city's own plan names both. Roy is in Weber County.
- The boundary and the rail line are not exactly coincident to the metre; they run together to within tens of metres for the length of the city, which is close enough to be the same line and not close enough to survey from.
- If a parcel near the west edge matters to you, take the boundary from the Davis County Assessor rather than from any map that shows a railroad.
The line
The boundary three sentences of history describe is the boundary a title company draws today.
The plan says the community separated from Clinton along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. That reads like a detail about the past. It is not. Measured on 16 August 2026, Sunset's municipal west boundary runs at about longitude 112.03548 west at the south end and about 112.0373 west at the north end. The rail corridor through this area, carrying both Union Pacific mainline segments and the commuter rail division, runs at about 112.0352 to 112.0372 west over the same latitudes. The two are the same line, to within tens of metres, for the full length of the city.
The city says as much itself in the present tense, in a completely different section of the same document. The transportation element states that the transit authority "runs commuter rail north and south through Sunset City adjacent to the existing railroad line that runs between Sunset and Clinton". So a boundary drawn along a railroad in about 1916 is still the line between two municipalities in 2026, and a commuter train runs down it several times a day without stopping in either.
That is what makes the name and the boundary one story rather than two. Three women chose a name; a community drew its edge along the only permanent thing on the west side of it, which was 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 an ad hoc decision about where one place stops and another starts to survive completely unamended, and almost nothing else about this town has survived that period unchanged.
There is a footnote on the other side of the county line that is worth exactly one hedged sentence. The commuter rail station north of here, in Roy, is on Sandridge Drive, and Sandridge is the first of the four names this area carried before it was Sunset. That is a name surviving on a street in the next city up, which is a genuine and checkable coincidence of naming. It is not a claim that the station is named for anything in Sunset, and nobody publishes that it is. The mover page has the practical version of where the nearest platforms actually are.
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, changed by a base in the 1940s, built out in the 1960s and flat ever since.
The plan gives incorporation one sentence with nothing attached to it: Sunset City was incorporated in 1935. Then it gives the two changes that made the town, in the space of three more sentences. The development of Hill Air Force Base directly to the east in the 1940s changed the nature of Sunset from agricultural to residential. During the 1960s and 70s there was an onslaught of residential development, typical to the rest of Davis County. And the 1960s brought the interstate corridor, which is the subject of its own page here.
The county tax roll confirms all of that with numbers the city does not print. Of 2,256 Sunset parcels carrying a year built, read on the Davis County Assessor's parcel layer on 16 August 2026, 157 date from the 1940s, 772 from the 1950s and 656 from the 1960s. That is 34.2 per cent of the taxed city built in one decade and 29.1 per cent in the next, with 71.5 per cent of everything predating 1970. A city's own narrative history and a county's own tax roll agreeing that precisely is unusual and it is worth trusting.
The population column is stranger and it is on no summary. The plan's own demographics table gives 5,204 people in 2000 and 5,122 in 2010. The 2020 decennial count was 5,475, and the current estimate on the state's municipal boundary layer is 5,372. So this city lost residents across the 2000s, gained them across the 2010s and is losing them again, which is not the shape a Wasatch Front city is supposed to have. It is the shape of a place with nowhere to build and a housing stock that turns over rather than expands.
One last thing about dates, because the temptation is obvious. There is no round anniversary here in 2026. Incorporation plus ninety fell in 2025 and has passed; the centennial is 2035. The 1916 naming turned a hundred and ten this year, which is not a number anyone marks. If a page, a listing or an event flyer offers you a Sunset anniversary in 2026, the arithmetic does not support one.
Three separate things in circulation about this city's origins are wrong, and one of them is wrong inside the city's own documents. First, Sunset was not settled around 1916. The city's own plan puts settlers here in the 1870s and 1916 is the naming and the separation. Second, the Great Salt Lake is not in the adopted plan's account of the naming at all; it appears only in the shorter retelling on the city website, so anyone printing the lake should say which city document they took it from. Third, the plan writes the third woman's surname as Rose Randal once and Mrs. Randall twice within the next two sentences, so the city's own record does not settle it and neither does this page. Where an origin story matters, read the plan rather than a summary of it.
Living with it
A hundred and ten year old boundary that still decides which city bills you.
For a buyer the useful part of this page is not the story, it is the line. Sunset and Clinton are separated by a rail corridor and nothing else. There is no river, no ridge, no arterial and no visible change in the streets to tell you which side you are on, and the boundary was drawn along the only permanent feature available in about 1916. Two houses a few hundred feet apart across that corridor are in two different municipalities with two different councils, two different police arrangements and two different sets of ordinances.
The same is true in the other three directions and it is worth knowing all four. North of the line is Roy, and Roy is in Weber County, so Sunset's north boundary is a county line and the town next door files its records somewhere else. South is Clearfield, whose ZIP code and address grid this whole city uses. West across the railroad is Clinton, which is what this place was called before 1916. And east across the freeway is federal ground inside Sunset's own limits. Four edges, four completely different kinds of edge.
What that adds up to in practice is that in Sunset you should never assume a city from an address, a postmark or a map pin. Take it from the Davis County Assessor for a specific parcel, every time, before an offer. That single habit answers the boundary question here, and it also answers the questions on the other pages of this companion, because the eastern quarter and the ZIP code and the street numbering are the same problem in different clothes.
None of this puts a number on anything, and that is the division of labour. Figures with dollar signs in front of them, what sells on which block and what a levy runs to, all live on the practical city guide. The question answered here is smaller and much older: where a place got its name and its outline, and why both have outlasted almost everything else about it.
The next century
Main Street and the freeway
What the 1960s corridor did to the street, in the city government's own unusually blunt sentence.
Read the guideThe eastern edge
The city limits and the base
The one boundary that is not a road or a railroad, and the quarter of the city on the far side of it.
Read the guideThe oldest address
The three parks
Three parks on the grid, and the biggest of them stands on the ground the first settlers here farmed.
Read the guideMoving here
Moving to Sunset
Four edges, two ZIP codes, one police department and a rate card published in full.
The mover pageThe practical side
The Sunset city guide
The half of an address with figures on it: the market, the accounts, the drive times, the schools.
Open the guideThe wider county
Davis County on The Local
Fourteen more towns between the mountains and the lake, and seven subjects written once for all of them.
The region hubKeep reading
The rest of Sunset on The Local.
The city line
The city limits and the base
About a quarter of this city is Air Force ground, inside the municipal line.
Read the guideThe street
Main Street and the freeway
The city wrote the destruction of the east side of Main Street into its own plan.
Read the guideThe parks
The three parks
Three addresses, three boweries, and a whole day under the biggest one for $15.
Read the guideMoving here
Moving to Sunset
Its own police force, and a neighbor's ZIP code, fire engines and street numbers.
Read the guideThe companion
The whole of Sunset
A mile and a half of grid, a freeway down the seam, and a federal quarter nobody drives into.
Start at the hubQuick answers
The name, answered.
The city's own adopted general plan says that in approximately 1916 Orlando Hadlock, the community's first bishop, asked Elizabeth Martin, Jessie Toone and Rose Randall to find a new name for the area, that one of them asked whether the others had noticed the beautiful sunset the night before, that she suggested the town be called Sunset, and that the other two agreed. Shortly after, the community separated from Clinton along the Union Pacific Railroad tracks. So the name was chosen first and the boundary followed it, which is the reverse of the usual telling.
That version comes from the city's website rather than from its adopted plan, and it is worth attributing rather than repeating flat. The website says several ladies living in the area were viewing the colourful sunset over the Great Salt Lake, were impressed with the beauty of the sun setting over the lake to the west, and decided to name the area Sunset. The general plan's account, which is longer and names all four people involved, mentions a sunset the night before and does not mention the lake at any point. Both are the city's own words.
Four things, then a fifth. The general plan says the Sunset and Clinton area was first known as Sandridge, the range, the basin, and summit, and the city's website repeats the same four with different capitalisation. Then in approximately 1896 the area was named Clinton, which is now the city immediately west across the railroad. Only in about 1916 did the eastern part of that take the name Sunset and separate. So the town on the other side of the western boundary carries the name this place used for roughly twenty years.
The 1870s. The city's general plan says the land was being used to graze and feed cattle as early as 1854 but that the area did not receive settlers until the 1870s, when the James Hill family arrived and farmed at approximately 85 West 1800 North. It names the Peter Terry, Chauncy Hadlock, Mark Elmer, James Burnett, Thomas Steele, James Mitchell and Durban Terry families as other early settlers. A settlement date of about 1916 is in circulation and the city's own document contradicts it: 1916 is the naming and the separation, not the founding.
1935, and the plan gives it a single flat sentence with nothing attached. 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, a listing or a page offers a Sunset anniversary in 2026, the arithmetic does not support one, and the two dates worth carrying are 1935 for the city and about 1916 for the name and the boundary.
Yes, and to a striking degree. Measured on 16 August 2026, Sunset's municipal west boundary runs at about longitude 112.03548 west at the south end and 112.0373 west at the north end, and the rail corridor through the area, carrying both mainline and commuter rail, runs at about 112.0352 to 112.0372 west over the same latitudes. The two are the same line to within tens of metres for the full length of the city. The plan says the same thing in the present tense, describing commuter rail running through Sunset adjacent to the existing railroad line between Sunset and Clinton.
Because of what the ground is. The general plan describes the land as an alluvial delta formed by the Weber River, with fertile soil and no natural surface water, undulating and dry and covered with 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 plan says the area blossomed when irrigation water became readily available at the completion of the Davis and Weber canal in 1884. That canal date is the city's claim and is worth confirming at the canal company.
The city's own document does not settle it. The general plan writes Rose Randal once and then Mrs. Randall twice in the following two sentences, so both spellings appear within a single paragraph of a single adopted document. This page prints the disagreement rather than choosing quietly, because a family name is the kind of thing a descendant will know better than a planning commission did, and a page that picks one silently makes a decision it has no basis for. If it matters, the city recorder is the place to ask.
No. The line runs along the western city limit and does not stop in Sunset. The city's own plan names the nearest stations as Roy, in Weber County, and Clearfield, in Davis County. There is a small coincidence of naming worth exactly one sentence: the Roy station is on Sandridge Drive, and Sandridge is the first of the four names this area carried before it was Sunset. That is a name surviving on a street in the next city up, and it is not a claim that the station is named for anything in Sunset, which nobody publishes.
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 boundary 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 visible change in the streets to tell you which side you are on. North of the city is a county line. South is the city whose ZIP code and street numbering this whole town uses. 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.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.