Moving here West Point
The county's quietest farm town, and the fields going to streets on its west edge
The last farm ground in West Point, and the streets going in where the fields come out
West Point was settled as farm country in 1867 and stayed the quietest, least built town in Davis County for most of the years since. It still is, mostly. But along the west edge, below the bluff, the wide fields are being platted into streets and large-lot houses, and the town's own plans point well past today's population. This is that farmland to neighborhood story, told through the land, the crops, and the houses going up where the fields were.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
West Point was farmed as open country from 1867 and is still the quietest, least built town in this corner of Davis County, with wide fields running through the middle of it. The change is on the west and north edges, below the bluff, where that farm ground is slowly being platted into streets and large-lot houses, which is the whole farmland to neighborhood story of the place.
Was it farmland
A farm town from 1867, and still mostly open ground
West Point was settled in 1867 by pioneers who were, in the city's own words, primarily farmers, with agriculture the most important industry for much of its early years. The place went by other names first, South Hooper and then Muskrat Springs, before it took the name West Point in 1910 for sitting near the west edge of Davis County. It has never had a proper town center. The city says plainly that it has no historic district and no old architectural core, so the heritage here is the ground rather than a Main Street.
That farm character is not only history. Much of the land inside the city is still zoned for agriculture, and the city describes a large part of its own territory as open space with few or no buildings on it. Drive the interior streets and you pass working fields, big lots and animals kept behind ordinary suburban fences. West Point is the least dense, least built city in this corner of the county, and that emptiness is the agricultural edge showing up as something you can see from the road.
So the honest one line answer to whether West Point was farmland is that it was, and to a large degree it still is. What is changing is where the newest streets are going, and how quickly. What follows is exactly that: the land and what grew on it, the houses replacing the fields, and the rules that decide which field turns into a neighborhood next.
The land and what replaces it
Fields coming out, large-lot houses going in
The farming this ground belongs to is a shrinking business across the whole county, and the numbers say so. Davis County counted 380 farms in the 2022 farm census, down 28 in five years, on about 48,690 acres, also down. The farms that remain are getting bigger on average even as the total ground falls, and most of them are small: well over half the county's farms are under ten acres. What comes off them leans more to nursery stock, sod, vegetables and fruit than to cattle, which is what a suburban county's farm edge looks like written as a statistic. None of those figures is West Point alone, because the count is kept by county, but the pattern is the ground this town sits on.
The two farm zones West Point keeps are the reason so much of it stays open. One allows a single house on five acres, the other a single house on one acre, both written to keep large lots, open space and room for farm animals. When a field is rezoned for houses it moves onto a residential ladder that runs all the way up to twenty homes an acre, so the distance between a one-house-per-acre field and a finished subdivision is a long one, and a city council votes on every step of it. That vote is the moment a field becomes a neighborhood.
You can read the result in the houses already standing. The city's housing count runs to a few thousand units, and the stock leans heavily to the large end: more homes here have five or more bedrooms than have four, and there are no one-bedroom units reported at all. That is the physical print of the farm zoning, big lots and big houses, and it is the kind of home that goes up when a field on the edge is platted. What those homes cost today, and how the market is moving, lives on the West Point city guide rather than here.
How a field becomes a neighborhood
The water is the lock on the gate, and the city holds the key
West Point does not simply wait for its fields to fill in. It has a rule that sets the order. New construction has to hand over water shares to the city before it can be built, and the shares being handed over are the field's own, the irrigation water that made it farmable in the first place. Once conveyed, that agricultural water is converted to city water, and ground that carries no shares is not allowed to develop. Put plainly, a field in West Point becomes a subdivision by giving up the water that made it a field.
There is a second lock, and it is made of pipe. Roughly 2,100 acres in and around the city cannot be reached by gravity sewer, a figure that spans both city ground and unincorporated county ground next to it. A field that has neither its water shares in order nor a way to reach the sewer stays exactly what it is. That is why the change here comes field by field rather than all at once, and why two lots a mile apart can be on very different timelines.
And there is a third thing, which is what the city has chosen not to do. It has never designated an agriculture protection area, the state tool that would freeze a parcel's farm use for twenty years and shield it from rezoning. So none of the open ground here is permanently farm ground. Every acre is zoned agricultural at the city's own discretion and can be rezoned by the same council. The plan talks about exploring conservation easements as a future idea, but nothing has been set aside, which means the fields you see are a snapshot rather than a promise.
Where the new streets are going
West and north, below the bluff, along a new highway
The growth is not spread evenly. The older, higher east half of West Point, above a low bluff that runs through town at roughly 4100 West, is closer to full. The room to build is on the west and north, on the lower ground below the bluff, and the city says so in its own plans: annexation and new development point that way, into the farmland on the western end of the city.
A new road made all of that easier to reach. The West Davis Highway, a roughly sixteen mile route up the west side of Davis County, opened to traffic in 2024 and ends here in West Point. The state built it wide, two lanes each way instead of one, because it expected the number of homes on the west side of Davis and Weber counties to keep climbing for decades. The city, for its part, has named particular farm ground it wants to see built, including fields south of 300 North, as places for shops and offices rather than crops.
How big does it get? West Point grew from about 6,000 residents in 2000 to just under 11,000 in 2020, and the 2025 Census estimate is about 13,000, which makes it one of the county towns still gaining while others hold steady. Its own long range plans reach much higher, toward tens of thousands of residents in the decades ahead. Those far-out numbers are projections built on different methods rather than head counts, so the honest way to hold them is as a direction rather than a date. The direction is clear enough: more streets, fewer fields, mostly on the west side.
Living on a West Point acre
A quiet town that buys most of what it delivers
Part of what keeps West Point feeling like a farm town is how little of its own service it runs. It has no city police force; law enforcement comes from the Davis County Sheriff's Office under contract. It has no city fire department either; fire and medical service come from the North Davis Fire District, shared with Clearfield and Sunset, and West Point is a member of that district rather than a customer of it. One of the district's two stations, its headquarters, sits inside the city on 3150 West.
Water comes from two directions. The east half of town drinks from the city's own system; the west half, below the bluff, connects through the Hooper Water Improvement District, named for the Weber County town next door. Secondary irrigation water for yards reaches nearly the whole city and is billed by lot size rather than by use, so on a large lot it can cost more than the culinary base charge, which is the opposite of the usual suburban water bill and easy to overlook when comparing two homes.
The rest reads like the countryside it recently was. Many streets have no sidewalk, which the city ties directly to its rural road standards. One bus route runs through town and almost nobody uses it to commute. A city rule keeps recreational vehicles and trailers off the street for more than a couple of days, which in a place full of big lots and big vehicles is a rule people actually meet. Even the published hazard profile fits a farm valley more than a lakeshore: the two risks the city flags highest are lightning and winter weather, not flooding.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Quick answers
West Point, the farm town, answered
Yes. West Point was settled as farm country in 1867 and stayed a farming community for most of its history. Much of the ground inside the city is still zoned for agriculture, which the city's own plan describes as a large area of open space with few buildings on it. The fields, the large lots and the animal keeping are what the place was built around, and much of that is still on the ground today.
Largely, and less so every year. West Point is the quietest and least built of the towns in this corner of Davis County, and wide fields still run through the middle of it. The change is on the west and north edges, below the bluff, where farm ground is being platted into streets and large-lot houses. It is a farm town turning into a suburb one field at a time, rather than one that has already finished.
Steadily, and faster than most of the county. The population went from about 6,000 in 2000 to just under 11,000 in 2020, and the 2025 Census estimate is about 13,000. The city's own plans look much further out, pointing toward tens of thousands of residents by 2050, though those are projections rather than counts. The direction is not in doubt: West Point is one of the Davis County towns that keeps gaining.
On the west and north sides. The city's growth points toward the ground below the bluff, roughly west of 4100 West, and into the farmland along the West Davis corridor, the highway that opened in 2024 and ends here. The city has named specific farm ground, including fields south of 300 North, among the places it wants to see built. The older east half of town is closer to full, so the fields going in are on the western edge.
Because the ground is zoned for farming and it is slow to build on. West Point keeps two agricultural zones, one allowing a single house per five acres and one a single house per acre, and much of the city sits in them. A field also cannot be developed until its irrigation water shares are signed over to the city, and roughly 2,100 acres in and around town cannot be reached by gravity sewer at all. Ground with neither stays a field.
Mostly large detached houses on large lots. The city's housing count runs to a few thousand units, and the stock leans toward bigger homes: more of them have five or more bedrooms than have four, and the plan reports no one-bedroom units at all. That mix of big lots and few small units is the physical print of the town's farm zoning.
Neither. Law enforcement comes from the Davis County Sheriff's Office under contract, and fire and medical service comes from the North Davis Fire District, a shared district that also covers Clearfield, Sunset and nearby county ground. West Point is a member of that district rather than a customer of it, and one of the district's two stations, its headquarters, sits inside the city on 3150 West. A quiet farm town buying most of what it delivers is part of the character here.
Two culinary providers, split by the bluff at about 4100 West. The city's own system serves the east half, and the Hooper Water Improvement District serves the west half. Secondary irrigation water, used for yards and gardens, reaches almost the whole city from a canal company and is billed by lot size rather than by use, which on a large lot can cost more than the culinary base charge. It is worth asking which provider serves an address before comparing two homes.
No. The city has never designated an agriculture protection area, the state tool that would lock in farm use for twenty years. Every acre of open ground is zoned agricultural at the city's own discretion and can be rezoned by the same council that zoned it. The plan mentions exploring conservation easements as a future idea, but nothing has been set aside, so the fields here carry no permanent protection.
Which field, which street, which side of the bluff
A West Point address is easy to describe badly, because the things that decide what it is really like are the ground and the rules under it: which side of the bluff the lot sits on, which district bills its water, whether the field over the fence is zoned to stay a field or to become streets. None of that shows up in a photograph. Tell me which parts of town you are weighing and I will connect you with a Davis County partner agent who knows the west side, and I will stay on the file for the financing questions.
Or call Scott: (435) 357-4345or send Scott a message
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