The department West Bountiful
A municipality of under six thousand people owns and staffs an eighteen hole golf course
Lakeside Golf Course, and the 114 acres that are most of this city's open space.
Lakeside is not a club that happens to sit in West Bountiful. It is a city department, with its own page in the city's department list and its own staff on the municipal payroll, and at 114 acres it is 88 per cent of all the park land the city owns. Eighteen holes at par 71, opened as nine in 1966, a published rate card, two practice greens that cost nothing, and a city survey in which half the residents said they never play it and valued it anyway.
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.
The live question
Can anyone play Lakeside, and what does eighteen holes actually cost?
Anyone can play it, and on the rate card the course published as of 15 August 2026 a full round on a weekday morning is 32 dollars for a regular adult, 28 for a player aged 55 or over and 22 for a player aged 17 or under, with nine holes at half those numbers. Friday to Sunday it is 40 dollars for eighteen and 22 for nine, with a junior rate of 24 for eighteen. A cart is 20 dollars for eighteen and 10 for nine. This is a public course, it takes public bookings, and it is owned by the city it sits in. The rate page is where to check it, because rate cards move every spring.
The part that surprises people is the ownership. Lakeside Golf Course is not a private club that happens to be in West Bountiful and it is not a county facility. It is a West Bountiful City department, listed in the departments section of the city website alongside public works and the police, with a director of golf, a superintendent, two assistant superintendents and an assistant professional on the municipal staff list. The city's own 2018 master plan states it flatly: Lakeside Golf Course is a city owned facility, classified as the city's only special use park, publicly owned and pay to play.
And then the number that makes this unavoidable. The course covers 114 acres. Every actual park in West Bountiful put together, the 14.5 acre City Park plus three mini parks, comes to 15.3 acres. So of the 129.3 acres of park land the city holds, 88 per cent of it is this golf course, and about five and a half per cent of the entire city's land area is inside its fence. The largest piece of public open space in West Bountiful is a golf course, and the practical city guide on this site does not mention it once.
The course, in numbers
114
acres, against 15.3 acres in all four city parks
1966
the year the course opened, as nine holes
71
par over 18 holes and a little over 6,000 yards
88%
of the city's park land inside one fence
What it costs
The published card, and the two ways to use the place for nothing.
Course rate cards are the sort of fact that goes stale quietly, so this one carries the date it was read and a note about what is not on it. Everything below is as published by the course on 15 August 2026, and the one number a West Bountiful household most wants, the resident rate, is deliberately not on the public card.
| Monday to Thursday | Friday to Sunday | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Eighteen holes, regular | 32 dollars | 40 dollars | Adult green fee, walking |
| Eighteen holes, senior | 28 dollars | Not listed separately | Aged 55 and over qualifies for the senior rate |
| Eighteen holes, junior | 22 dollars | 24 dollars | Aged 17 and under qualifies for the junior rate |
| Nine holes | 16 dollars regular, 14 senior, 11 junior | 22 dollars regular, 12 junior | The nine hole card is where the weekend gap is widest |
| A cart | 20 dollars for eighteen, 10 for nine | Same | Rental clubs are 30 for eighteen and 15 for nine, and a push cart is 6 and 3 |
| Punch cards | Ten rounds 160 dollars, twenty rounds 300, thirty rounds 450 | Not valid on holidays | Senior and junior punch cards are cheaper, and the course tells West Bountiful residents to ask about special rates |
| The driving range | Buckets at 7, 12 and 15 dollars by size | Same | Unlimited season passes are sold and expire on 31 October; a thirty small bucket punch card is 150 dollars |
As published on lakesidegolfcourse.com and checked in August 2026. Rates change with the season and with the city's budget year, so treat this as the shape of the card rather than as a quote, and confirm on 801-295-1019. Two things are genuinely free and neither is on the card: the two practice greens and the sand trap the city's 2018 master plan records as open to anyone in the community, and the group use of the range the same plan says the course often hosts at no charge for local scouts and community groups.
The details
Getting there
From City Hall go north on 800 West to 1200 North, then west to 1100 West; the entrance is on the east side of 1100 West. Coming off the freeway, exit 317 at 400 North and run west and north through the grid, or come down 1100 West from the Centerville side. The course sits on the northwest quarter of the city with the Legacy corridor beyond it, which is why the views open west rather than to the mountains.
Before you go
- Ring 801-295-1019 for the current rate and for the resident rate, which the course does not publish online.
- The range keeps its own maintenance schedule and the course notes that it closes early on Wednesdays and opens late on Mondays and Thursdays.
- Each player is required to have their own set of clubs, which is worth knowing before two people turn up to share a bag.
- The course sells unlimited range passes that expire on 31 October, so the value of one depends on the month you buy it.
The course
Nine holes in 1966, eighteen by the nineties, and a name that started out borrowed too.
The course's own site gives 1966 as the opening year and describes an eighteen hole layout at par 71 running over 6,000 yards, with tree lined fairways, smaller greens and what it calls an open course concept. The published directories fill in the numbers the course does not: roughly 6,030 yards, a slope of 113 and a rating of 67.2, with bluegrass greens and bluegrass fairways. Those three figures come from golf databases rather than from the operator, so take them as indicative. What the course does publish, alongside the rates, is the practical layer: a driving range, a full rate card for it, the Lakeside Grill and Cafe on site, and lessons from the staff.
The history has a detail that fits this city better than any other course in the county could manage. The published course histories say Lakeside began as a nine hole course under the name Bountiful Springs, and that the second nine was finished in 1992. That would mean even the golf course started out named after the town next door before it settled into a name of its own. It is a good enough detail to be worth checking properly, and it rests on secondary sources rather than on the city or the course, so it is printed here as what the directories say rather than as a municipal fact. One call to the pro shop or a look in the city's minutes would settle both the original name and the 1992 date.
What the city publishes is the programme. The golf department page lists a men's league on Wednesdays, a senior league for players aged 60 and over also on Wednesdays, morning and evening ladies' leagues on Tuesdays, and a junior league on Thursday mornings in summer, plus junior golf clinics for ages 7 to 17 and lessons from the staff. The named annual events are the Men's Club Championship, a two man scramble run with the state golf association, and the WB Amateur, none of which publishes a fixed date, so they are a call rather than a diary entry.
The staff list is short and it is on the city website rather than on a club page, which is the clearest signal of what this place is. A director of golf, a superintendent, two assistant superintendents and an assistant professional, all under a municipality of under six thousand people. That is a department with a payroll and a capital plan, not an amenity somebody else provides.
What the city itself says about owning it
The 2018 master plan is unusually candid on the subject. It records that the course is one of the only facilities in the city that charges a fee for direct use, that it attracts users from outside the city boundaries, and that it requires support from the city. It records that half of survey respondents said they never use it and that residents value it as open space even if they do not golf, and that in the importance ranking it scored higher in the somewhat important band than any other amenity while scoring lower in the extremely important and very important bands. And it records a suggestion from residents that the clubhouse might be expanded into a joint clubhouse and community centre, in a city whose only arts venue is the lobby of City Hall.
The arithmetic
The city has 2.7 acres of park per thousand people and 114 acres of golf course it does not count.
This is where a golf course stops being a leisure subject and becomes a planning one. In the 2018 master plan the city divides its 15.3 acres of active, developed, publicly owned parks by the 2017 population of 5,769 and arrives at 2.7 acres per thousand residents. Lakeside is excluded from that sum, explicitly, because it is a special use park and pay to play. The plan then prints the comparison with its neighbours, which is a brave thing for a city document to do: West Bountiful 2.7, North Salt Lake 4.7, Layton 4.9, Woods Cross 5.6.
So the city with the largest single piece of public open space in south Davis also has the lowest park provision of the four cities it benchmarks itself against, and both statements are true at the same time because the big green space is not a park. The plan does not hide from that either. It says the city has little publicly owned open space, that the single community park is heavily used, and that there are no dedicated soccer fields despite high demand. It also names the mitigations honestly: the sharing arrangements with the Davis School District and the South Davis Recreation District, and a tradition of sharing recreation amenities with the surrounding communities.
The consequence a household actually feels is simple. If you play golf, West Bountiful gives you a course inside the city at a public rate with a resident discount you have to ask for. If you do not, the same 114 acres is a view, a wind break and a green horizon you cannot walk across, and your park is the one beside the freeway. Both of those are honest descriptions of the same asset, and the city's own survey found residents holding both positions at once.
There is a live thread here too. The 2018 plan records that the city owns land west of the golf course and was considering ideas for it, including a sports complex, and that it hoped to tie any such development in with the undeveloped Jessi's Meadow parkland whose only current access runs across a private easement. That is a 2018 note about an idea rather than a project with a budget, and it should be read as exactly that until the city publishes something newer.
Every number on this page except the acreage is the kind that moves, and one of them moves every spring. The rate card was read at the course on 15 August 2026 and rate cards are reset annually, usually before the season opens. The course publishes no season dates and no daily hours at all, so a March or a November round is a phone call rather than an assumption. The resident rate for West Bountiful addresses is not published online; the rate page simply tells residents to ask. The driving range keeps its own maintenance windows, closing early on Wednesdays and opening late on Mondays and Thursdays. And the leagues, the clinics and the three named tournaments carry no published dates. One call to 801-295-1019 settles all of it, and it is worth making before you plan a season around any figure on this page.
Living with it
A hundred and fourteen acres of green that belong to the city and not quite to the public.
For anyone weighing an address near 1100 West, the useful way to think about Lakeside is as the largest single land use decision this city has ever made and then kept. It is a fifth of a square mile of irrigated open ground in the northwest quarter of a town that has almost no other open ground left, it is maintained on a municipal budget, and it is not going anywhere quietly, because unwinding a city department is a different thing from selling a field. That stability is the real amenity, and it is worth more than any yardage figure.
What it is not is a park. You cannot walk a dog across it, cut through it on foot or use it as a green route between neighbourhoods, and the only free access is the practice greens and the sand trap. The city's own plan is careful about that distinction and so is this page. If your household's use of open space is walking rather than playing, the honest answer is that your ground is the 0.8 mile loop at City Park, the paved county trail out the west end of town, and the two local trails the city built on a canal bank and an old railway grade.
Two of those three are genuinely interesting and almost nobody outside the city knows they exist. The Prospector Trail runs on the abandoned Denver and Rio Grande Railroad alignment and was built in coordination with the transit authority, and the city's own survey found it among the four most used public facilities in town. The Onion Parkway Trail runs east to west along the north side of a canal, built with Davis County in 2010, and it exists to connect the middle of town to the rail trail and then out to the county corridor. The west door page has the trail geometry and the four Legacy trailheads.
One last practical note for a golfing household. The course draws players from outside the city, which the city says plainly, so a Saturday tee time is a regional competition rather than a neighbourhood one. Weekday mornings are where the published rate is lowest and the sheet is thinnest, and the senior and junior cards are where the price gap is widest. If you are moving here partly for the course, ring about the resident rate before you assume it exists in the form you are imagining, and read the mover page for what else this address gives and charges for.
The other 15.3 acres
West Bountiful City Park
The single community park, the bowery booking head start residents get, and the cabin the city lists without explaining.
Read the guideThe west door
Birnam Woods
Four trailheads onto the county corridor, why every one of them exists, and the wetland behind the fence.
Read the guideThe old street
Onion Street
A mile of 800 West on the National Register, with carriage houses the nomination calls unique in Utah.
Read the guideThe other city course
Eaglewood
North Salt Lake runs its own eighteen up on the bench, with an oversight committee and a very different view.
Read the guideDays out
Family weekends in Davis County
What the county's paid attractions cost and when they open, all of them a drive north of here.
Read the guideThe practical side
The West Bountiful city guide
Everything with a figure attached: the market, the levy, the utility accounts, the drive times.
Open the guideKeep reading
More of West Bountiful on The Local.
The plant
The refinery in the wrong city
The operator says West Bountiful on a page headed Woods Cross, and both are true.
Read the guide800 West
Onion Street
A mile of 800 West listed in 2004 under a name a sweet Spanish onion crop gave it.
Read the guideThe only one
West Bountiful City Park
Fourteen and a half acres doing all the work, and a cabin the city never explains.
Read the guideThe west door
Birnam Woods
Four trail doors that exist because a highway turned four streets into dead ends.
Read the guideMoving here
West Bountiful or Bountiful
One city runs its own power, water and tip. The other one buys nearly all of it in.
Read the guideThe companion
West Bountiful, in full
A plant, a golf course, an onion street and the last open ground on the west side.
Read the pageQuick answers
Lakeside, answered.
Yes, in both senses. It takes public bookings from anybody, and it is publicly owned: Lakeside is a West Bountiful City department, listed in the departments section of the city website with a director of golf, a superintendent, two assistant superintendents and an assistant professional on the municipal staff. The city's own 2018 master plan describes it as city owned, classifies it as the city's only special use park, and calls it publicly owned and pay to play. It is not a country club and there is no membership requirement to play a round.
As published by the course on 15 August 2026, eighteen holes are 32 dollars Monday to Thursday and 40 dollars Friday to Sunday for a regular adult, with a senior rate of 28 on weekdays for players aged 55 and over and a junior rate of 22 on weekdays and 24 at the weekend for players aged 17 and under. Nine holes run 16 dollars regular on weekdays and 22 at the weekend. A cart is 20 for eighteen and 10 for nine. Punch cards start at 160 dollars for ten rounds. Rate cards reset annually, so confirm on 801-295-1019.
The course's own rate page tells West Bountiful residents to inquire about special rates, but it does not publish what those rates are. That is the honest answer as of 15 August 2026: a resident rate is referred to and its terms are a phone call rather than a look up. Ring 801-295-1019 and ask directly, and ask at the same time whether it applies to punch cards and to the driving range passes as well as to single rounds, because those are three different products on the published card.
Eighteen holes at par 71. The course's own site gives the yardage as over 6,000 and describes tree lined fairways with smaller greens and an open course concept; golf directories put it at roughly 6,030 yards with a slope of 113 and a rating of 67.2 on bluegrass greens and fairways, though those three figures come from databases rather than from the operator. The course opened in 1966. Published histories say it began as nine holes under the name Bountiful Springs with the second nine completed in 1992, and that origin rests on secondary sources worth confirming at the course.
Yes, and it has its own price list. Buckets are sold at 7, 12 and 15 dollars by size, a punch card of thirty small buckets is 150 dollars, and unlimited season passes are sold at individual, family and corporate levels, all of them expiring on 31 October. The range keeps its own maintenance schedule and the course notes that it closes early on Wednesdays and opens late on Mondays and Thursdays. The city's 2018 master plan also records that the facility often hosts local scout and community groups at the range free of charge.
Partly. The city's 2018 master plan records that two practice greens and a sand trap are open free to anyone in the community, which is a genuine free amenity that appears nowhere on the rate card and nowhere on the city hub. What you cannot do is treat the course itself as open space: it is not a park, there is no public right to walk across it, and the city excludes it from its park calculations for exactly that reason. If your household wants walking ground rather than playing ground, the city park loop and the three trails are the answer.
Roughly five and a half per cent of the city's land area, and 88 per cent of its park land. The city holds 129.3 acres of park land in total, of which 114 acres are the golf course and 15.3 acres are the four actual parks: the 14.5 acre City Park and three mini parks totalling 0.8 acres. West Bountiful covers about 3.31 square miles, which is roughly 2,118 acres, so a single golf course accounts for about one acre in eighteen of the whole city.
Because it charges. The city's 2018 master plan calculates its park level of service by dividing 15.3 acres of active, developed, publicly owned parks by the 2017 population of 5,769, and it states in the working that Lakeside is excluded because it is a special use park and a pay to play facility. That produces 2.7 acres of park per thousand residents, which the plan then compares with North Salt Lake at 4.7, Layton at 4.9 and Woods Cross at 5.6. The city publishing that comparison against itself is the reason the number is worth quoting.
As published by the city on 15 August 2026: a men's league on Wednesdays, a senior league for players aged 60 and over also on Wednesdays, ladies' leagues in the morning and the evening on Tuesdays, and a junior league on Thursday mornings in summer. Junior golf clinics run for ages 7 to 17 and lessons are available from the staff. The named annual events are the Men's Club Championship, a two man scramble run with the state golf association and the WB Amateur, and none of the three carries a published date, so they are a call to the pro shop rather than a diary entry.
A course the city owns, and the reason its park numbers look the way they do.
Lakeside is the most consequential piece of ground in West Bountiful after the refinery, and it is the one nobody writing about this city bothers to mention. If you play, it is a public rate inside your own city with a resident discount you have to ask for by phone. If you do not, it is the reason a town of three and a bit square miles reports the lowest park provision of the four cities it benchmarks against, and the reason its walking ground is a loop by the freeway and a trail on an old railway grade. Tell me which of those two households you are, and I will introduce you to a Davis County partner agent who knows which streets sit where.
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.