Moving here Woods Cross
Two miles from the city it is constantly confused with, and genuinely different in a short list of ways
Woods Cross or Bountiful, and what a city line actually decides.
Woods Cross covers about 3.83 square miles between Bountiful, West Bountiful and North Salt Lake, shares a postal code with one of them, and does not touch the Salt Lake County line at all. The school district, the hospital and the inversion are the same as the neighbor's. The police department, the parks code, the tax notice and the planning documents are not. Here is the list, along with the five ways out of a city under four miles across.
My own ground is Southern Utah, four hours south of here, so these pages are researched rather than lived. Every figure on them was read at the body that issues it: the city code and the city budget notices, the Census boundary files, the state transit, wildlife and environment agencies, the county clerk, and the federal aviation and chemical safety records. Each one carries the date it was checked. A Davis County partner agent handles the work on the ground.
Where this sits
Three and eight tenths of a square mile, boxed in on every side by three other cities.
Woods Cross is not a place you commit to for its own centre, because it does not have one. It is a small, flat, fully built out municipality wedged between three larger neighbors, and the reason to choose it deliberately rather than by accident comes down to a handful of things a city line actually changes. This page is the list of those things.
The geography first, because two versions of it are in wide circulation and one of them is wrong. Woods Cross covers about 3.83 square miles of valley floor at roughly 4,249 feet, with Bountiful on the east, West Bountiful to the north and west, and North Salt Lake to the south. It does not touch the Salt Lake County line. North Salt Lake lies between, so anyone describing Woods Cross as a border city is describing the wrong municipality by one.
The second thing is that the boundary is irregular in a way that matters. Running addresses along the city's edges through the U.S. Census Bureau geocoder finds the line crossing the 1600 North corridor somewhere between 1275 West and 1610 West, which is why the pond out there has its state published address in West Bountiful and its parking lot in Woods Cross. Neither city can claim it cleanly. Treat every edge address here as something to check rather than something to assume.
The third is direction of travel, and it is the fact that most changes how this city should be read against its neighbors. The Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute's July 2024 estimate put Woods Cross at 11,489 people, a change of 64 fewer than the year before, which is a fall of about six tenths of one per cent. Ten of the fifteen Davis County cities lost population on that same estimate. A built out city that is not growing is simply a different product from a city adding subdivisions, and that is a statement about the place rather than about anybody in it.
The mover's numbers
11,410
the 2020 decennial census count
11,489
the July 2024 estimate, down 64 on the year
3.83 sq mi
of city, effectively fully built out
~4,249 ft
the city's mapped elevation on the valley floor
Getting out
Five ways out of a city that is under four miles across.
For a place this size Woods Cross has an unusual number of exits, and choosing the right one is most of what a newcomer learns in the first fortnight. Three freeway interchanges, a parkway and a rail platform, each with a different catch. The exit numbers matter, because one of them is routinely printed wrong.
| I-15 exit 316 | I-15 exit 315 | I-15 exit 317 and US-89 | Legacy Parkway | FrontRunner | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it is | The 500 South interchange, State Route 68, rebuilt as a diverging diamond and opened on 15 June 2015 | The 2600 South interchange, State Route 93, signed for Woods Cross | The US-89 and State Route 131 split at 500 West, where US-89 leaves the freeway on a left exit southbound | State Route 67, an 11.5 mile four lane parkway opened on 13 September 2008 | The station at 750 South 800 West, one island platform and two free lots |
| Where it puts you | The city's main door, and the access point for the rail station | The south end of the city and the North Salt Lake and Bountiful line | The western industrial corridor and Beck Street, running south toward Salt Lake City | North to the interchange at Farmington, or south to I-215 in Salt Lake County | North toward Ogden or south toward Salt Lake City and on toward Provo |
| The catch | It straddles the West Bountiful line, and a diverging diamond is genuinely disorienting the first time you drive one | The exit is signed Woods Cross even though 2600 South runs a boundary that mostly belongs to two other cities | This is the one people mislabel. 500 South is exit 316, not 317, and printing 317 for it sends a driver a mile north | UDOT has been widening it from 23 March 2026 through the end of 2026, with no published notice about the parallel trail | Monday to Saturday only, no Sunday service, and hourly trains off peak and all day Saturday |
| Status in August 2026 | Open | Open | Open | Open, with construction alongside | Running, with a double tracking program in a federal grant phase |
| What to do about it | Use it once before you decide anything, at the hour you would actually use it | Know it exists; it is the quieter way in from the south | Beck Street and US-89 are the local alternative when the freeway backs up, and locals use them | Check the project page before a long trip, and expect noise and dust through the end of 2026 | Test the timetable rather than the distance to the platform |
Interchange numbers and configurations from published interstate references and from UDOT's South Davis Improvements project record, parkway figures from UDOT as carried in the phase research, and transit pattern from the Utah Transit Authority, all checked 15 August 2026. Legacy Parkway carries roughly 20,000 to 23,000 vehicles a day at a 65 mile per hour limit that took effect on 1 January 2020, the same date the corridor's truck restriction sunset. That restriction applied at five or more axles and 80,000 pounds, and the figures often quoted for it are wrong.
Two of Davis County's headline road projects have nothing to do with this city, and the one that does is a plan rather than a construction schedule. The West Davis Corridor, State Route 177, runs sixteen miles from the interchange in Farmington north and west to State Route 193 in West Point, and it opened on 6 January 2024. It is a north Davis road and it does not touch Woods Cross. The Davis to Salt Lake City Community Connector, the bus rapid transit line, runs from Farmington to Research Park by way of Main Street through Farmington, Centerville, Bountiful and North Salt Lake, and Woods Cross is not on the transit authority's list of cities served. What does name Woods Cross is the I-15 rebuild between Farmington and Salt Lake City, which completed its final environmental impact statement and record of decision in the autumn of 2024 with a preferred alternative of five general purpose lanes plus one express lane, a rebuilt Warm Springs interchange and new walking and cycling facilities, at an estimated 3.7 billion dollars with 1.7 billion in state funding allocated and construction possible as soon as 2027. That is the defining commute variable here for the next decade, and it is a plan with a date attached rather than a delivery.
The city line
Two miles from the neighbor, and here is the list of what actually differs.
The honest answer to whether a Woods Cross address is meaningfully different from an address two miles east is: in a handful of specific, checkable ways, yes, and in most of the ways people ask about, no. The school district is the same, the hospital is the same, the metro is the same, the inversion is the same. What changes is municipal, and it is worth listing plainly rather than arguing. A head to head between two cities is a different exercise from this one and it belongs on the comparison index, which is where this site settles that sort of question.
Policing changes. Woods Cross runs its own police department, established in 1960 when the city appointed its first town marshal and now running fifteen full time and four part time sworn officers. It is not policed by the county sheriff and it is not part of a consolidated south Davis district. Parks rules change, because the Woods Cross parks code is the city's own and it prohibits animals of any species in city parks except service animals, sets park hours at five in the morning to eleven at night, and bans alcohol outright. Taxes change, because the city levy is the city's own and the recreation, arts and parks sales tax is a Woods Cross measure that Woods Cross voters renewed in November 2025.
What does not change, and is worth knowing because it is a genuine benefit that nobody mentions, is the recreation district. Woods Cross belongs to the South Davis Recreation District, and resident status at the South Davis Recreation Center at 550 North 200 West in Bountiful covers exactly five cities: Bountiful, Centerville, North Salt Lake, West Bountiful and Woods Cross. From City Hall it is roughly two and a half miles and about seven minutes. A Woods Cross homeowner pays into that district on the property tax notice and gets resident admission back, which is a rare case of a tax line item with a visible, usable return. The district publishes its hours and admissions, and both flip on a seasonal schedule.
And then there is the thing this whole companion keeps circling. The refinery, the airport, the freeway sign and the pond all carry names that do not match the boundary underneath them, so a Woods Cross address is one where checking the address against the actual city line is not pedantry. It decides which police department answers, which park rules apply, which tax notice arrives and which general plan governs the ground behind the fence.
The property tax question that was live when this page was written
The city proposed moving its own property tax rate from .001392 to approximately .002079 for FY2027, generating an additional 994,249 dollars, which the city describes as a 46.4 per cent increase in its property tax revenue, from about 2.14 million dollars to about 3.13 million. The stated purpose is to pay a portion of the bond payments towards the City Hall and Hogan Park project. Woods Cross is one of eleven Utah entities holding a Truth in Taxation hearing for a fourth consecutive year. Two hearing dates circulated for August 2026, the city's own alert giving one and the statewide roundups another, and whether the council adopted the increased rate afterwards is not settled in the published record. The figures and the purpose are public record with a date; what any individual household would pay is not computed anywhere on this site, and the certified tax rates at the Utah State Tax Commission are the place to settle it.
Water and services
Two wells, a well that ran dry, and a line under 1100 West that had to come out first.
Woods Cross City provides culinary water and storm water. Sewer comes from the South Davis Sewer District, electricity from Rocky Mountain Power, which is to say this is not a municipal electric city, gas from Dominion Energy as it transitions to the Enbridge Gas brand in Utah, and refuse collection from Waste Management with garbage and green waste weekly and recycling every other week, billed on the city utility bill. That is the list the practical city guide carries and it is accurate.
What the city guide does not carry is that the water system has been under visible strain and the city has said so in public. Reporting on a council discussion in April 2025 set out the position: two wells currently meet the city's culinary needs, Well number 3 at fifty five years old has run dry and repairs were urgent so the city would have a backup if another well failed, and a leaking water line on 1100 West between 2150 South and 2600 South would cost about 1.3 million dollars and had to be replaced before road construction began on that stretch. Culinary water charges rose about 5 per cent, and the city administrator noted that water tank construction costs had doubled in six years, so acting was preferred to waiting. The city planned three infrastructure projects across three years using the revenue.
That account comes from television reporting of a council discussion rather than from the minutes themselves, so pull the council record from the city before relying on the detail. There is also a March 2025 water utility rate study in the state public notice archive that this page does not draw on, and it is the document most likely to carry the full picture.
The other water fact is one every Davis County household deals with and few movers expect. A home here typically has two water systems and two bills, culinary inside and untreated secondary water for outdoor irrigation, and in Woods Cross both are now metered. State law is pushing secondary water metering across the region on a deadline later this decade; this page does not cite a bill number for that because the number in circulation was not verified at the Legislature.
The details
Getting there
Every drive time above is an estimate and they match the figures already published on the practical city guide, so the two do not contradict each other. The I-15 corridor moves with the peak, the parkway is under construction through the end of 2026, and the rail option only exists Monday through Saturday. Confirm any of it for the hour you would actually travel rather than for the middle of a Tuesday.
Before you go
- Ask the city in writing about the culinary and secondary water arrangement for a specific address before an offer, not after.
- Confirm the certified tax area rate for the parcel with Davis County, and check whether the FY2027 city levy change was adopted.
- Check which city the parcel is actually in. The postal code covers two municipalities and the boundary is irregular.
- Woods Cross runs its own police department and its own parks code, so municipal answers come from the city rather than from the county.
Living with it
Schools, the hospital and the honest version of what this address is for.
Davis School District serves the city, and the district's own boundary tool is the only correct answer to which school serves a specific address. The facts, without any judgment attached to them: Woods Cross High School is at 600 West 2200 South and is inside the city, its teams are the Wildcats, and it draws from neighboring south Davis cities as well as from Woods Cross. Published enrollment figures across three years run 1,613 for 2023 to 2024, about 1,555 for 2024 to 2025 and about 1,491 for 2025 to 2026. That is a declining count across three reported years and it is consistent with the city's own population estimate, and this page attaches no cause to it and makes no assessment of the school.
In city elementary schools are Woods Cross Elementary at 745 West 1100 South and Odyssey Elementary at 2050 South 1955 West, a dual language school opened in the autumn of 2014. Junior high assignment is the genuinely contested one, with Millcreek Junior High at 245 East 1000 South and South Davis Junior High at 298 West 2600 South, both in Bountiful, and the answer depends on the address rather than on the city. Legacy Preparatory Academy is a charter option in the area rather than an assigned school. Take the feeder chain from the district per address.
The nearest hospital is Lakeview Hospital at 630 East Medical Drive in Bountiful, roughly one to three miles from most of the city, with the full Salt Lake metro's health systems behind it. That, along with the freeway and the rail platform, is most of the practical case for this address: it is a close in, built out, small municipality with its own services and a very short reach into a large metro.
The honest summary is that this is not a destination address and it does not try to be. It is a well positioned one, and what it asks of a household is a specific and short list: know which of the four strips of the city a street sits in, check the boundary rather than the postal code, test the timetable rather than the distance to the platform, drive the parcel at a real hour, and read the two civic documents that actually govern the place. Whether the price is right for what you get is a market question and it belongs on the practical city guide rather than here.
The practical side
The Woods Cross city guide
The money side: prices, the tax picture, providers, drive times and current listings.
Open the guideTwo towns at once
The comparison index
Where head to head city matchups are settled on this site, rather than argued on a page about one city.
Open the indexThe document to read
The Station Area Plan
The adopted general plan element governing the half mile around the rail platform, and what it says about housing.
Read the guideThe corridor
Silver Eagle and the name
Which plant is in which city, the 2009 record, and the homework a west side parcel actually asks for.
Read the guideDays out
Family weekends in Davis County
The county's paid attractions and their prices and hours, including the recreation center this city holds resident status at.
Read the guideThe water edges
The lakeside parks
The pond on this city's western seam, the algae advisory running on it, and the rest of the county's water.
Read the guideKeep reading
More of Woods Cross on The Local.
One block
Hogan Park
An 1849 burial ground, an 1850s cabin, two markers, and a rebuild landing on the block.
Read the guideThe field
Skypark Airport
A public use field inside the city limits, named for the neighbor, 234 flights a day.
Read the guideA penny in ten dollars
The RAP tax
A penny for every ten dollars, renewed 1,322 to 435, and half of it paid by visitors.
Read the guideThe half mile circle
The Station Area Plan
One island platform, no Sunday trains, and a half mile circle drawn around a refinery.
Read the guideTwo plants
Silver Eagle and the name
The 45,000 barrel plant is in West Bountiful. The one inside the city runs waxy crude.
Read the guideThe companion
Woods Cross, in full
The block with the 1849 graves, the field with the airplanes, and the penny that buys parks.
Read the pageQuick answers
Moving to Woods Cross, answered.
Less than people assume in most respects, and a specific short list in a few. The school district, the nearest hospital, the metro, the freeway and the winter inversion are shared. What differs is municipal: Woods Cross runs its own police department, its own parks code with its own hours and rules, its own property tax levy, and its own dedicated recreation, arts and parks sales tax that its voters renewed in November 2025. Both cities are inside the South Davis Recreation District, so resident status at the recreation center is the same for either.
No, and this is worth correcting because it appears in plenty of descriptions. North Salt Lake sits between Woods Cross and the Salt Lake County line, so Woods Cross is two municipal boundaries away from the county rather than on it. Its neighbors are Bountiful on the east, West Bountiful to the north and west, and North Salt Lake to the south. The city is close to the county line in driving terms, roughly ten to twelve miles from downtown Salt Lake City, but it does not touch it.
I-15 exit 316, the 500 South interchange on State Route 68, is the city's main door and the access point for the FrontRunner station. It was rebuilt as a diverging diamond interchange and opened on 15 June 2015 as part of UDOT's South Davis Improvements project, and it straddles the West Bountiful city line. Exit 315 at 2600 South is the quieter southern way in, signed for Woods Cross even though that road mostly runs a boundary belonging to other cities. Exit 317 is the US-89 and 500 West split, and it is frequently mislabeled as the 500 South exit.
Davis School District, and the district's own boundary tool is the only correct answer for a specific address. Woods Cross High School is at 600 West 2200 South inside the city and draws from neighboring south Davis cities as well; published enrollment runs 1,613 for 2023 to 2024, about 1,555 for 2024 to 2025 and about 1,491 for 2025 to 2026. In city elementary schools are Woods Cross Elementary at 745 West 1100 South and Odyssey Elementary at 2050 South 1955 West, a dual language school opened in autumn 2014. Junior high assignment splits between Millcreek Junior High and South Davis Junior High, both in Bountiful, depending on the address.
Woods Cross City provides culinary water and storm water. Sewer comes from the South Davis Sewer District, electricity from Rocky Mountain Power, gas from Dominion Energy as it transitions to the Enbridge Gas brand in Utah, and refuse collection from Waste Management with garbage and green waste weekly and recycling every other week, billed on the city utility bill. Expect two water systems and two bills, one culinary and one untreated secondary water for outdoor irrigation, and in Woods Cross both are metered.
Not at the moment, on the state's own estimate. The Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute's July 2024 estimate put the city at 11,489 people, 64 fewer than the year before, a fall of about six tenths of one per cent, and ten of the fifteen Davis County cities lost population on that same estimate. The decennial counts run 6,419 in 2000, 9,761 in 2010 and 11,410 in 2020, so the long arc is upward and the recent year is not. A built out city of under four square miles has very little room to add housing, which is the structural explanation.
Yes, and it is a genuine benefit that the practical city guide does not mention. Resident status at the South Davis Recreation Center at 550 North 200 West in Bountiful covers exactly five cities: Bountiful, Centerville, North Salt Lake, West Bountiful and Woods Cross. From Woods Cross City Hall it is roughly two and a half miles, about seven minutes. Woods Cross property owners pay into the South Davis Recreation District on the property tax notice and get resident admission in return. Hours and admissions flip on a seasonal schedule, so confirm them with the district.
The city's culinary system has been under visible strain and the city has discussed it publicly. Reporting on an April 2025 council discussion set out that two wells currently meet the city's culinary needs, that Well number 3 at fifty five years old had run dry with repairs treated as urgent so the city would have a backup if another well failed, and that a leaking line on 1100 West between 2150 South and 2600 South would cost about 1.3 million dollars and had to be replaced before road construction on that stretch. Culinary charges rose about 5 per cent, and the city planned three infrastructure projects over three years. Pull the council minutes from the city before relying on the detail.
That is a housing and budget question rather than an editorial one, and this companion hands it over deliberately. What these pages can tell you is what the address actually asks: know which of the four north to south strips of the city a street sits in, check the municipal boundary rather than the shared postal code, test the rail timetable rather than the distance to the platform, drive the parcel at a real commuting hour, and read the two civic documents that govern the place, which are the Station Area Plan and the city's parks code. Prices, inventory and what the market is doing belong on the practical city guide.
A small city with its own everything, and a boundary worth checking street by street.
Woods Cross gives a household its own police department, its own parks rulebook, its own dedicated parks tax, a commuter rail platform and a very short reach into the Salt Lake metro, inside under four square miles that are already fully built. What it asks in return is attention to detail: which strip a street is in, which city a parcel is actually in, what the water arrangement is at that address, and what the city's own planning record says about the ground behind the fence. Tell me what you are weighing and I will put you with a Davis County partner agent who works south Davis every week, 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.