The city line Sunset
Where Sunset ends and Hill Air Force Base begins
Sunset does not sit beside the base. The city line is drawn inside it
About a quarter of Sunset, roughly 255 acres east of Interstate 15, is Hill Air Force Base. It is closed ground you cannot drive into, the freeway runs right down the seam behind Main Street, and yes, you will hear jets. Here is where the line actually runs, what it changes for a house on the residential side, and what the city's own plan says about the ground it holds. Everything about the base itself, its mission, its gates, its noise study, lives on the Hill Air Force Base page.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
Sunset is not next to Hill Air Force Base. It contains a piece of it. The city's eastern edge is not a border with another town; it is a line drawn inside the installation, out past the east shoulder of Interstate 15. About a quarter of the city, roughly 255 acres, is base ground on the far side of that freeway, and it is closed: no public road crosses it and there is nothing out there for you to visit. For a home on the residential side, west of the freeway, this changes very little day to day. It shows up in two places instead. It shows up on paper, because one small city ends up spanning two ZIP codes and borrowing its street numbers from Clearfield. And it shows up in the air, because an active fighter base sits directly east and you will hear the jets. What the base is, how its gates work and what its noise study says are all handled once, for the whole county, on the Hill Air Force Base page.
Where the line runs
The city ends inside the base, not at its fence
Sunset is a small place, about 1.47 square miles at the very north end of Davis County, right on the Weber County line. Most of it is an ordinary grid of streets west of Interstate 15, roughly 2,420 homes and lots that the county taxes in the normal way. Then you reach the freeway, and past it the map does something unusual. The city keeps going. For about a fifth of a mile east of I-15, the full length of the town, the ground inside the Sunset city limit is Hill Air Force Base.
That strip is roughly 255 acres, which works out to about a quarter of the whole city. It is not a neighborhood and it is not an amenity. It is closed installation ground, off the county tax roll, with no public road leading into it from the Sunset side. You cannot drive out there and look at it, and there would be nothing to look at if you could. The honest way to picture Sunset is a mile and a half of regular grid, a freeway down the back of it, and a federal quarter on the far side that belongs to the town on paper and to the Air Force in practice.
The freeway is why the two halves feel like different worlds. Interstate 15 runs immediately behind the east curb of Main Street, a matter of yards, not a field or two away. That is close enough that the city's own general plan says building the freeway in the 1960s "required the destruction of the east side of Main Street." So Main Street in Sunset has a west side of shops and essentially no east side, the interstate carries well over a hundred thousand vehicles a day past a town of about 5,400 people, and almost none of them stop. One line on the map, the I-15 alignment, sets the shape of Main Street, the size of the city, and the border with the base all at once.
What it means where you stand
Living next to a working airfield, from the Sunset side
Start with the noise, because it is the part a listing photo cannot show you and the part a mover most deserves a straight answer on. Hill is an active fighter base, its aircraft fly right here, and you will hear jets in Sunset. Some days it is a low rumble in the background. Other days the pattern brings them over the north end of town and it is genuinely loud. I cannot tell you how much that will bother you, because that is a personal thing, so do the one test that settles it: stand on the street you are considering, at more than one time of day, and listen for yourself before you decide. What the base's own published noise study says about specific streets is on the county page.
Next is access, and the answer is short. There is no way onto the base from the residential side of Sunset. The strip inside the city line has no gate and no public road across it. Sunset's own door to the freeway is Interstate 15 exit 335, at the south end of town, and that is the exit most people use to reach the base's west side. Which gate serves whom, what hours it keeps and what credentials it wants are the base's business and change often, so they live on the county page rather than here, where they would go stale.
Past that, the base is simply somebody else's subject. What it flies, what it employs, the aerospace museum, the air show, the whole story of the installation is written once, for the entire county, so it does not get told fifteen slightly different ways across fifteen town pages. What you get here is the line on the map and what it means for a house. The Hill Air Force Base page carries everything on the other side of it.
The east side, in plain terms
The city's own plan
The city describes the base as a piece of itself
None of this is a secret the town keeps. Sunset has written it down about itself for years. The general plan the city council adopted in November 2022 describes Sunset as about 1.9 miles by half a mile, "with an additional 0.3 x 1.9 miles to the east that is currently being controlled by the United States Air Force." Read that slowly. The city is not saying the base is next door. It is describing an additional piece of itself, on the east, that the Air Force controls. "Currently being controlled by" is the honest way to put it: a municipal line and an installation fence that do not sit on top of each other, and a city that holds the ground on the map while the Air Force uses it on the ground.
The same plan explains how Sunset became a suburb in the first place. "The development of Hill Air Force Base directly to the east of the City in the 1940's changed the nature of Sunset from agricultural to residential." Before the base, this was farm ground on the Weber River delta, watered by the Davis and Weber canal that was finished in the 1880s. The base arrived, the freeway followed in the 1960s, and the farms became the grid that is here now. The whole modern shape of the town is a response to the thing on its eastern edge.
Where the split still turns up for a homeowner is the mail. Because the base strip sits in the base's ZIP, 84056, while the residential city uses Clearfield's, 84015, one small town spans two ZIP codes and has none of its own. Its street numbers are borrowed too: a Sunset address reads as 1300 North or 2300 North because the grid is measured from Clearfield, not from any center of Sunset. It is worth knowing when you buy, because the mailing city, the ZIP and the street numbering all point at a neighbor, while the city you actually live in, and pay, is Sunset. The full run of who bills you for what is on the moving to Sunset page.
The 2002 clause
A city of a square mile and a half has a standing plan to annex the whole base
There is one more thing in the plan, and it is the strangest fact Sunset owns. A section still in the current document records a policy the city adopted in 2002: to annex "the entirety of Hill Field Air Force Base," out to the Davis County boundaries it shares with South Weber, Roy, Riverdale, Layton and Clearfield, "in the event that Hill Field Air Force Base would be closed." A town of a square mile and a half has written down, in its governing plan, that it would take in the entire base if the base ever went away.
It helps to be precise about what that is and is not. It is a land use contingency in a planning document, adopted in 2002, in an era when base closure rounds were a live worry for every town near an installation, and left in place through the plan's 2022 revision. It is conditional. It does nothing at all unless the base closes. And no closure of Hill Air Force Base has been announced, proposed, scheduled or reviewed. The clause is not a forecast and it is not a hint. It is a small city doing what small cities beside large federal holdings do, which is decide in advance what it would want if the ground ever came free.
Do not let anyone read the 2002 clause, or the 255 acres, as a sign the base is changing. The annexation clause is conditional on an event that has not happened and is not proposed, and it has sat unchanged in the city's plan for more than twenty years. The base ground inside the city line is not new either; that boundary has been where it is for decades, and the city describes it in the present tense. If any of this touches a decision you are making, read the plan yourself at the city and ask the recorder whether the annexation section has been amended. A page, a listing or an agent that turns a standing contingency into a prediction is inventing something the document does not say.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Common questions
Sunset and the base, answered
It is more than next to it. The city limit is drawn inside the base, not along its edge, so about a quarter of Sunset, roughly 255 acres east of Interstate 15, is base ground. The rest of the town is an ordinary residential grid west of the freeway. What the installation itself is, and how it works, is covered on the county's Hill Air Force Base page.
Yes. Hill is an active fighter base sitting directly east of Sunset, and you will hear its aircraft. Some days it is a distant rumble and some days it is genuinely loud, depending on the flight pattern. The honest way to gauge it is to stand on the street you are considering at more than one time of day. The base's published noise study is on the county page.
About a quarter of it, roughly 255 acres. The strip runs the full length of the city, a little over a mile and a half, on the east side of Interstate 15, and it is about a fifth of a mile wide. It is closed installation ground with no public access from the Sunset side.
Not from the residential side. The base ground inside the city line has no gate and no public road across it. Sunset's own freeway access is Interstate 15 exit 335 at the south end of town, which is also the exit most people use for the base's west side. Which gate to use, its hours and what credentials it needs are on the county page, where they are kept current.
Because the base strip east of the freeway sits in the base's ZIP, 84056, with a Hill AFB postal community, while the residential city uses Clearfield's ZIP, 84015. So one small town spans two ZIP codes and has none of its own. Most Sunset street numbers are borrowed from Clearfield's grid as well.
Yes. The plan the city council adopted in November 2022 describes Sunset as about 1.9 miles by half a mile, with an additional strip about 0.3 by 1.9 miles to the east that is "currently being controlled by the United States Air Force." That is the city describing a piece of itself rather than a neighbor.
It did, conditionally, in 2002, and the clause is still in the current plan. It records the annexation of the entirety of Hill Field Air Force Base, out to the county lines Sunset shares with South Weber, Roy, Riverdale, Layton and Clearfield, only in the event the base were ever closed. It is a land use contingency in a planning document. No closure has been announced, proposed, scheduled or reviewed.
No. The residential city is an ordinary grid west of Interstate 15, with its own police department and its own utility bills. The base quarter is closed ground east of the freeway that the city holds on paper and that nobody drives into. For most homeowners the boundary shows up only in the mail and in the sound of aircraft overhead.
Day to day, less than the map suggests. It shows up in two places: on paper, where the town spans two ZIP codes and uses Clearfield's street numbers, and in the air, where an active airfield next door means real aircraft noise. Neither is hidden, and both are easy to check before you commit. Everything about the installation itself is on the county's Hill Air Force Base page.
A quarter of the city that nobody who lives there drives into
The boundary with the base is the most unusual thing about Sunset, and it changes less about a house than you might fear, which is exactly why it is worth understanding before someone hands you a version of it that is scarier than the facts. If you are weighing a specific street here, tell me which one, and I will connect you with a Davis County partner agent who can pull the parcel record and walk the block with you, jet noise and all.
Or call Scott: (435) 357-4345or send Scott a message
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