City West Bountiful, Davis County
A small city on the old lake floor, farmed for a century before anybody incorporated it
West Bountiful, and the big things inside it that carry other towns' names.
5,917 people at the 2020 decennial census on 3.31 square miles of lake floor at about 4,232 feet, with a 45,000 barrel a day refinery named for Woods Cross, a landfill named for Bountiful and a sewage plant named for South Davis all inside the boundary. The largest piece of public open space is a golf course the city runs as a department. The main street is on the National Register under a second name. Six pages on the city itself, and pointers to the three county subjects an address here really uses.
Southern Utah is the ground I actually work, several hours south of Davis County, so these pages are researched rather than lived. What is on them was read at the body that publishes it: the National Park Service nomination file for this city's historic district, the city's own General Plan and parks master plan, the state air quality permits, the federal enforcement dockets, the regional planning council's award papers, and the operator's own filings. Every figure carries the date it was checked. A Davis County partner agent takes the ground level work.
Start here
Three regional facilities sit inside this city and not one of them is named for it.
Begin with the arithmetic, because it explains the place faster than any tour of the streets would. West Bountiful covers 3.31 square miles. Inside that boundary are a 45,000 barrel a day oil refinery that the whole state calls the Woods Cross refinery, a landfill whose federal air permit prints a West Bountiful address and whose name and owner are Bountiful City, and the treatment plant of the South Davis Sewer District at the west end of 1200 North. Three pieces of regional infrastructure in a residential town of under six thousand people, and every one of them wears somebody else's name. The operator of the refinery says so itself: its own facilities page, checked 15 August 2026, opens by placing the plant in West Bountiful, on a page titled Woods Cross.
The fourth thing at the centre of this city is not named for anywhere else, it is simply invisible from outside. Lakeside Golf Course is a West Bountiful City department, with its own page in the city's department list, its own director of golf on the municipal staff and its own domain. It covers 114 acres. The city's entire public park inventory, all four parks together, comes to 15.3 acres. So 88 per cent of the park land in West Bountiful is one golf course, a figure the city published itself in its 2018 parks master plan and which no relocation summary carries.
And the fifth is a name. The street the city is built along, 800 West, appears in the National Register of Historic Places file under a second name it has carried since the sweet Spanish onion crop of the 1920s and 1930s. The register's own location line reads 800 West (Onion Street) from 400 North to roughly 1350 North, both sides. The West Bountiful Historic District was listed on 18 June 2004 under reference 03000158, the city has an adopted policy to put the old name back on a sign, and the practical city guide on this site does not mention any of it. Meanwhile the population has stopped rising: 5,917 at the 2020 decennial count, 5,890 on the state's 1 July 2024 estimate, one of ten Davis County cities that lost residents that year.
West Bountiful at a glance
5,917
counted at the 2020 decennial census
3.31 sq mi
of old lake floor at about 4,232 feet
88%
of city park acreage that is one golf course
2004
the year 800 West went on the National Register
The land
A sixth of this city is industrial and more than a third of it is still farmed.
Most descriptions of West Bountiful reach for the word suburb and stop. The city's own General Plan carries a table that says something far more interesting, because it tracks how the ground has been used across four decades. Read down the 2019 column and the shape of the place appears at once: residential land is the third largest category here, behind agriculture and industry.
| Land use | 1978 | 1990 | 2019 | What that is on the ground |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Agriculture | 38.8% | 21.9% | 36.8% | The west side, between the last streets and the Legacy corridor, plus the pastures still inside the historic core |
| Industrial | 8.4% | 9.3% | 16.4% | The refinery either side of 800 West at the south end, and the smaller yards along 500 South and 500 West |
| Residential | 21.7% | 23.4% | 15.3% | The grid between the freeway and the fields, on one acre, half acre and quarter acre zoning districts |
| Transportation | 19.0% | 17.1% | 11.8% | Interstate 15 and the Legacy Parkway, which between them wall the city on two sides, plus the Union Pacific alignment |
| Vacant | 4.8% | 18.2% | 10.7% | What is left, and it is the ground the 2026 west side concept is drawn on |
| Commercial | 2.1% | 3.3% | 4.9% | Almost all of it east of the freeway on 500 West, the old U.S. Highway 91, which the city calls a regional retail destination for southern Davis |
| Public | 5.2% | 6.8% | 4.1% | City Hall, the elementary school, the parks, and the golf course the city counts separately from its parks |
Table 2.2 of the West Bountiful City General Plan 2006 to 2026, sourced there to the 1978 comprehensive plan and the 1990 land use field study, as posted at the Utah Public Notice Website and checked 15 August 2026. Read the rows across rather than down: the city annexed land between the surveys, so the agricultural share rising between 1990 and 2019 reflects a bigger city as much as a change of use. Prices and current listings live on the practical city guide.
Two other numbers finish the picture. West Bountiful has exactly two north to south streets west of the freeway, 800 West and 1100 West, and the city's own plan names the shortage of north to south routes as its central traffic problem. One of those two runs directly through the refinery. And the city is nearly out of room: the General Plan states plainly that other than the far west side, the majority of vacant land has been developed, and the only annexation ground left is two areas between the western boundary and the Legacy Parkway, roughly 53 acres and 119 acres, with the city stating that no development will be allowed west of the parkway at all.
The commercial four point nine per cent is worth a sentence of its own, because it explains why the middle of this city looks the way it does. Almost all of it sits east of Interstate 15 along 500 West, which was U.S. Highway 91 before the freeway, and the city's own plan describes West Bountiful in the same breath as largely a bedroom community and as a regional retail destination for much of southern Davis County. Both are true. The shops are real and they are on the far side of the freeway from the houses, because the city decided long ago that commercial development belongs on the outer edges and recorded residents saying they were happy with that.
The way to cross the place on foot is a set of borrowed alignments. West Bountiful has 3.9 miles of regional trail, and the three that make it up are the Legacy Parkway Trail along the far western edge, the Prospector Trail running north to south on an abandoned Denver and Rio Grande Railroad grade, and the Onion Parkway Trail running east to west on a canal bank the city built along in 2010. Add 0.9 miles of local trail and 0.6 miles of bike lane and the city's whole existing network is 5.4 miles, against 14 miles proposed at build out. Every part of it that exists today used to be something else.
One last small thing, and it says as much about the scale of this place as any acreage figure. City Hall at 550 North 800 West keeps a four and a half day week, open Monday to Thursday from half past seven in the morning until five and on Friday until three, and the same 2006 building houses the city's own police department. A municipality of fewer than six thousand people running its own force out of the same building as the mayor's office, on a Friday afternoon that ends at three, is a specific kind of town and worth knowing before you need either of them.
The long view
Settled in 1848 as farm ground, incorporated a century later, and named twice along the way.
The National Register nomination for the historic district, prepared in January 2003 and listed the following June, is the best single account of how this place came to exist, and it is a federal document rather than a local pamphlet. It records that West Bountiful was colonised in 1848 as the western expansion of Bountiful when the demand for farmland grew, and that the James Fackrell, Sr. family settled here that year, followed by the Muirs the next. What it says next is the part worth carrying: the settlers here homesteaded on their own farmland rather than commuting out from a village, so West Bountiful never followed the Plat of the City of Zion grid that shaped almost every other Utah town. It grew instead as a crossroads and line community at the meeting of two roads, 800 West and 400 North. The nomination calls that pattern one of only a few of its kind in the state.
The growth was slow. Roughly a hundred residents in 1850, and still only 305 people in sixty four households in 1880, on ground the nomination describes as fertile and well watered by artesian wells and mountain streams. What followed was produce: corn, wheat, potatoes, beets, carrots, turnips, cabbage, pumpkins, squash, watermelons and onions, hauled by wagon into the Salt Lake City markets and paid for in cash. The prosperity shows up in the buildings, and in one building type in particular. The nomination states that West Bountiful is known for large two story brick carriage houses standing behind Victorian houses, and that the collection here is unlike anywhere else in the state.
Then the onions. The register file puts it in a single sentence: West Bountiful became a major producer of sweet Spanish onions in the 1920s and 1930s, and 800 West became known as Onion Street. The name has outlived the crop by roughly ninety years. It survives in the register's own boundary description, in an adopted city policy to erect vintage street signs with the original names along Onion Street and Howard Street, in the Onion Parkway Trail the city built along a canal in 2010, and in a Christmas event the city's arts council helps run at City Hall. The Onion Street page carries the district, the houses and the dates.
The civic dates are late and they are precise. West Bountiful incorporated as a town on 28 January 1949, a hundred and one years after the first farms, and became a third class city on 12 November 1962. Both events happened after the refinery was built, which is the mechanical reason the plant carries the neighbour's name: when it was named in 1932 there was no West Bountiful to name it for. The land use survey history is just as small town and just as documented: the first survey in 1978 by a consulting firm, the second in 1989 by Weber State College students working through an advanced planning techniques class.
A city that was farm ground for a century before it was a city still shows it. More than a third of the land here is agricultural, and the last of it is the ground everybody is now arguing about.
The county
Three Davis subjects reach this doorstep and four of them are somebody else's drive.
Davis County carries seven subjects written once for all fifteen cities rather than fifteen times over. West Bountiful has a genuine stake in three of them, and the three below are the ones an address here actually uses in an ordinary month.
Out the west end
The Legacy Parkway Trail
Four doors onto the paved corridor open off West Bountiful streets, and the county page runs the whole thing in trail order with the water stops and the mileage.
Read the guideThe northern seam
The lakeside parks
Bountiful Pond sits on the 1600 North line where this city meets Woods Cross, and the county page has the fishery rules and the advisory running on it.
Read the guideThe flyway
Farmington Bay and the birding
The wetlands west of the trail are on the same flyway as the county's marquee birding ground, and the permit rule that took effect on 1 July 2026 is on that page.
Read the guideFour of the seven county subjects have nothing to do with this address except a drive time, and saying so is more useful than pretending otherwise. West Bountiful sits on the old lake floor at about 4,232 feet with no bench and no canyon mouth inside it, so the Davis canyons belong to the cities east of here, starting with Bountiful across the freeway. Antelope Island is reached from Syracuse, a long way north. Hill Air Force Base is at the far north end of the county. And the county's paid attractions, the amusement park and the campground and the aquatic centre, are all a drive rather than a walk from here. All seven are indexed on the Davis County hub and this companion links them rather than writing them twice.
If you only have one day
A mile of old street, a practice green and a look at what is behind the fence.
First thing
Walk the mile of 800 West
Forty two buildings between 400 North and 1347 North, twenty one of them contributing, and a set of two story carriage houses the register calls unique in Utah. Free, and about forty minutes.
The Onion Street pageMid morning
Use the free practice green
Two practice greens and a sand trap at the city's own course are open to anyone in the community at no charge, which the city put in writing in 2018 and almost nobody knows.
The golf course pageMidday
Loop the only park there is
Fourteen and a half acres beside the freeway with a 0.8 mile path around it, six hoops, two sand volleyball courts and a historic cabin the city lists and does not explain.
The city park pageAfternoon
Take the west door out
The trailhead behind the subdivision exists because the parkway cut the street. Beyond the fence is 2,225 acres of wetland you are allowed to look at and not to enter.
The west door pageThe rhythm
One big day in July, a bike parade in August, and a Christmas named after an onion.
The city's own day is the Fourth of July and it is not a founders day, whatever the search results suggest. The published 2026 shape of it was a carnival, food trucks and a concert at City Park on 3 July with fireworks at ten, then a flag raising ceremony at City Hall at half past seven the next morning and a parade at ten. Those times came off event listings rather than off the city, so treat them as the shape of the thing rather than as the schedule, and take the 2027 version from the city calendar in May. Separately, the arts council runs a founder's day programme, and it is not the fireworks night. Do not merge the two.
The rest of the calendar is small and real. The city calendar, checked 15 August 2026, carried a patriotic bike parade on 24 August from six to seven in the evening, a planning commission meeting the next night, and recycle collection windows on 17 and 18 August and again on 31 August and 1 September. In December the arts council helps run Christmas on Onion Street at City Hall, which is the best named event in Davis County and the reason to check whether it is still running before you plan around it: the record for it is the city's 2018 parks plan rather than a current listing. The arts council also runs a monthly concert series, a monthly featured artist display at City Hall and a farmers market, and City Hall is the arts venue because the city has no other.
Two small mechanics govern the rest of an ordinary year and both catch newcomers. Booking the large pavilion at City Park is a January job rather than a June one, because a resident address can claim a summer date two months before anybody else can, and the whole rental season is only mid April to mid October. And household recycling arrives on published two day windows rather than on a weekly round, which is exactly the kind of thing nobody tells you in the first month. The city park page carries the booking calendar and the rest of the park.
What governs an ordinary year here more than any event is what the ground and the air are doing. The city sits on the lake floor below the bench, low enough that the whole south Davis basin shares the Wasatch Front inversion season, and that subject belongs to Salt Lake County's companion rather than to this one; the valley in winter page is where it is written. What this companion carries instead is the specific and local version: what the refinery on 800 West actually is, what its public record says, and who you call about an odour, all on the refinery page.
Personal fireworks are banned in West Bountiful as of 21 July 2026, and the ban has no end date on it. The city posted the restriction on its own home page on 21 July 2026 in these terms: the use of personal fireworks is prohibited in West Bountiful City until the ban is lifted. It was still posted when this page was checked on 15 August 2026. Utah cities issue and lift these restrictions on their own timing and by their own conditions, so a household planning a July here should read the city notice in the week it matters rather than assume last year's answer. The city's public display at City Park is a separate thing and it is not affected by a restriction on personal use.
The West Bountiful companion
Six pages, and four of them are about something the city guide leaves out.
Everything The Local has written about West Bountiful itself: the plant that carries the next town's name and the record that goes with it, the golf course that is a municipal department and most of the city's open space, the mile of 800 West that is on the National Register under a second name, the single community park and what the city says about having only one, the door onto the county trail and the wetland you cannot enter behind it, and what this address actually asks of a household against the much larger neighbour it is named after.
Quick answers
West Bountiful, answered.
For three regional facilities that carry other towns' names. The 45,000 barrel a day refinery known everywhere as the Woods Cross refinery operates here, and HF Sinclair says so on its own facilities page. The Bountiful Sanitary Landfill, owned by Bountiful City, holds a federal air permit whose location line reads 1300 West 1600 North, West Bountiful. The South Davis Sewer District treats at a plant on the west end of 1200 North inside the city. Beyond those, the city is known locally for Lakeside Golf Course, which it owns and runs as a department, and for the mile of 800 West listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2004.
On the valley floor of south Davis County, seven miles north of Salt Lake City, with Centerville to the north, Bountiful to the east, Woods Cross to the south and the Great Salt Lake wetlands to the west. It covers 3.31 square miles at about 4,232 feet, which is roughly thirty to sixty feet below Bountiful proper, and the drop is the whole story of the west side: this is old lake bed, not bench. West Bountiful does not touch the Salt Lake County line and does not touch North Salt Lake. It shares the 84087 postal code with Woods Cross.
Yes. HF Sinclair's own facilities page, checked 15 August 2026, states that the refinery is located in West Bountiful, Utah, on a page headed Woods Cross. The company said the same thing to the Utah Legislature in a written statement for the record on 18 August 2020, describing the Woods Cross Refinery as located in West Bountiful with a crude oil capacity of 45,000 barrels per day. Its published addresses at 1070 West 500 South and 393 South 800 West both return West Bountiful city from the Census Bureau geocoder. The refinery that is actually inside Woods Cross is a different and much smaller plant.
It owns one. Lakeside Golf Course at 1201 North 1100 West is a West Bountiful City department with its own page in the city's department list and its own director of golf on the municipal staff. It is 18 holes at par 71 and opened in 1966. At 114 acres it is 88 per cent of all the park land the city holds, against 15.3 acres in the four actual parks, and the city excludes it from its park level of service calculation because it is pay to play. Two practice greens and a sand trap are open free to anyone in the community.
Because of the crop. The National Register nomination for the West Bountiful Historic District records that the town became a major producer of sweet Spanish onions in the 1920s and 1930s and that 800 West became known as Onion Street. The name is not folklore or a nickname a blog invented: it appears in the register's own location and boundary description, which reads 800 West (Onion Street) from 400 North to roughly 1350 North, both sides. The city's General Plan carries an adopted policy to erect vintage street signs with the original names along Onion Street and Howard Street.
It incorporated as a town on 28 January 1949 and became a third class city on 12 November 1962. The settlement is a century older: the National Register nomination dates the colonisation of West Bountiful to 1848, when the James Fackrell, Sr. family settled here as Bountiful expanded west in search of farmland. The two dates get collapsed regularly, and 1848 for settlement against 1949 for incorporation is the correct pairing. The refinery on 800 West predates the town by seventeen years, which is the mechanical reason it carries a neighbour's name.
Not at the moment. The 2020 decennial census counted 5,917 residents and the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute's 1 July 2024 estimate put the city at 5,890, a fall of 27 people or about three tenths of one per cent, and West Bountiful was one of ten Davis County cities that lost population on that estimate. The structural reason is in the city's own General Plan: other than the far west side, the majority of vacant land has been developed, and the only annexation ground left is roughly 53 and 119 acre areas between the western boundary and the Legacy Parkway. The city's own long range projection is 6,504 people by 2027 and 11,987 at build out in 2060.
No. The line runs through the city without stopping, and the nearest platform is the Woods Cross station at 750 South 800 West next door. West Bountiful does hold jurisdiction over the northern part of that station's planning area, and it received a 30,000 dollar Wasatch Front Regional Council award to study what that ground could become. Building the railway also cost the city a street: 800 West was closed between 500 South and 700 South in Woods Cross for the commuter rail, which broke the direct connection between the two cities.
Policing is the city's own. West Bountiful runs its own police department, sharing the City Hall building constructed in 2006 at 550 North 800 West, with a non emergency number of 801-292-4487. Culinary water comes from the city, but the city purchases most of it from the Weber Basin Water Conservancy District, supplements from a well at 550 West 1000 North, and stores it in two concrete tank reservoirs that physically sit inside Bountiful City. Sewer is the South Davis Sewer District. Power is Rocky Mountain Power, not a municipal utility, which is a real difference from Bountiful next door.
Six pages on a city that is mostly known for things named after somewhere else.
West Bountiful is a small, flat, nearly finished city with a very specific set of questions attached to it: which side of 800 West a parcel sits on and how far it is from the plant, whether an address is inside the National Register district or only inside the local overlay, what the city's own park arithmetic means for a household that uses parks, which of the four doors onto the county trail is walkable from a street, and what happens on the last open ground on the west side once a concept becomes an application. Tell me what you are weighing and I will introduce you to a Davis County partner agent who works these streets, and stay on the file for the financing side.
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.