Spend a morning at Wardle Fields Regional Park
14148 S 2700 West · Free · Year round
This is the strongest single reason to drive to Bluffdale and it is not the city's. Wardle Fields is a Salt Lake County regional park built on the old Wardle family farm, with about 40 of its 80 acres developed, and the published kit is closer to a small adventure park than to a municipal green.
A destination playground built around a 25 foot fire watchtower with slides off it, two racing zip lines, a 300 foot bouldering wall and a separate 20 foot climbing wall, a splash pad, sixteen pickleball courts, a sports field, basketball, restrooms, four drinking fountains and a concrete path running through the whole thing. It is free, and on a hot Saturday it is the busiest ground in the south end of the county. The city's own flagship park is a different and much quieter proposition.
The splash pad runs on a county schedule, not a city one
Salt Lake County publishes the water as on from noon to 8pm, Wednesday through Sunday, through the Memorial Day to Labor Day season. That is a narrower window than the city's own pads at Vintage Park and Independence Park, which run 10am to 8pm across the same season. Turning up at half past ten on a Monday in July with children in swimming things is a specific and entirely avoidable disappointment. Confirm the current schedule with the county before you travel.
The water goes on the grass afterwards, which is why the pad exists at all
The county states that water used on the splash pad passes through a filter and is then used to irrigate the surrounding park. In a valley that spent several recent summers under drought messaging, that is the design decision that let a large water feature be built and kept running, and it is worth knowing because it also explains why the schedule tightens rather than the pad closing outright when supply is short.
The details
Getting there
The park sits west of Redwood Road with its own car park off 2700 West. Approach from the north rather than through the middle of the city while 14600 South is closed, because the published detours add real time to an east to west crossing.
Before you go
- This is a Salt Lake County park. City telephone numbers will not answer questions about it.
- Three reservable pavilions: two seating about 80 and a small one seating about 32.
- The splash pad is Wednesday to Sunday only, on county hours.
- Sixteen pickleball courts here means this is the default south valley venue.
- It is busy from mid morning on summer weekends and quiet on weekday mornings.
Get a seat at the Old West Days rodeo
2400 W 14400 South · Ticketed · Three nights in July
The Bluffdale Equestrian Park sits at the western end of the city's main park, and for three nights each summer it holds a rodeo sanctioned through the Rocky Mountain Professional Rodeo Association. In 2026 that was 16 to 18 July. It is the single event that fills this city, and it is the reason the arena is there at all in a valley that has largely stopped keeping horses.
Mutton bustin is part of the programme, open to children up to 60 pounds at 15 dollars an applicant with twenty places a night and registration opening on 1 July. Everything about the rodeo moves year to year, including its month, so the calendar rather than the memory is the source. The park page covers the arena, the site around it and the way the celebration split in two in 2026.
In 2026 the rodeo and the rest of Old West Days were nearly a fortnight apart
The rodeo ran 16 to 18 July and everything else ran 30 July to 8 August: the theatre production, the pickleball tournament, Party in the Park, youth night, the senior dinner, the Lions Club car show, the kids market, the family concert with fireworks and, on the last day, the parade and the family festival. Two blocks, two separate weekends, one name over both. Anybody who booked a visit around the parade and expected to catch the rodeo missed it by twelve days.
Mutton bustin places go quickly and the weight limit is enforced
Twenty places a night at fifteen dollars, registration opening on 1 July, and a published limit of 60 pounds. That combination means the decision has to be made in the first days of July rather than in the week of the rodeo, and it means a child close to the limit needs weighing rather than estimating. It is a small thing that produces a large disappointment at the arena gate if it is left to the night.
The details
Getting there
The arena and the main park share one published address on 14400 South and one set of car parks, which fill early on rodeo nights. While 14600 South is closed, approach from Redwood Road to the east or 2700 West to the north rather than cutting across the middle of the city.
Before you go
- Take the current dates and prices from the city rather than from last year's listing.
- In 2026 the rodeo and the parade were in different weeks. Check both.
- Mutton bustin registration opened 1 July, with twenty places a night.
- Parking is on site and around the park, and it fills well before the first event.
- The arena hosts other events through the season, so a quiet night is not a closed one.
Ride the pump track and skills course at Day Ranch Park
1156 Rochelle Day Drive · Free · Year round
Almost twenty acres that opened on 12 August 2023, and the reason it is on this list rather than in a list of neighbourhood parks is the bike side. The city built a combined skate park and pump track, a mountain bike skills course with jump lines, and a separate bike playground for people still learning, and describes the combination as the first of its kind in the state.
Around that sits an all inclusive playground with a butterfly garden, eight pickleball courts, a tennis court, two multipurpose sports fields, a dog park, picnic areas, natural areas and connecting trails. Construction started in June 2022 and the city put a 200,000 dollar state outdoor recreation grant, awarded on 19 May 2022, into it. For a city of this size that is a serious piece of public building.
A pump track is the part worth understanding before you arrive
A pump track is a closed loop of rollers and bermed corners ridden without pedalling, by pushing the bike down into the dips and unweighting over the rises. It works on a balance bike, a BMX, a mountain bike or a scooter, and it teaches the thing that makes every other kind of riding easier. The skills course and the jump lines beside it are progressive, so the same visit can suit somebody on their second week and somebody who rides Corner Canyon at weekends.
It is the one place in this city that works properly on a February afternoon
Splash pads are shut from Labor Day, the sledding hill at Parry Farms needs snow on the ground and the arena is dark for most of the year. Hard surfaces do not have that problem. On a dry cold day the pump track, the skate bowl and the pickleball courts are all usable, which makes Day Ranch the default answer to what there is to do here in the middle of winter.
The details
Getting there
Rochelle Day Drive sits in the newer northern grid. The central pavilion carries its own published address at 15371 South Puma Mountain Way, which is the one to use if a booking rather than a ride is the reason for the trip.
Before you go
- Helmets are the obvious sense on a pump track and a skills course, whatever the signage says.
- The bike playground is a separate, gentler area from the jump lines.
- There is a dog park on site, which is not true of most parks in this city.
- The all inclusive playground is designed for mixed mobility rather than for one age.
- It is city run, so Bluffdale City Hall on 801-254-2200 is the number that helps.
Walk into the Jordan Narrows from the southern trailhead
Jordan Narrows Road · Free · Year round
There is exactly one place where the Jordan River enters Salt Lake County, and it is a gap in the Traverse Mountains at the bottom of this city, below the Point of the Mountain. Utah Lake has one outlet and this is where it arrives. Walking into that gap from the Bluffdale side is the most genuinely singular hour available in the city, and almost nobody does it.
What is down there is water infrastructure and its ruins: Turner Dam, the first of two dams on the river, splitting the flow into the East Jordan and the Utah and Salt Lake canals; the Metropolitan Water District's pumping systems; and, beside the parkway trail near Iron Horse Boulevard, the concrete forebay and foundations of a power plant that started generating on 15 January 1899. The river page takes the whole reach.
This is the first reach of a 45 mile trail, not a separate walk
The Jordan River Parkway runs the length of the valley from here to the Great Salt Lake, and it is a county system rather than a Bluffdale one. What is specific to this city is the end of it: the gap, the dam, the pumps and the ruins. Everything about the trail as a whole, including the paddling version and where the continuity breaks, sits on the county page rather than on this one.
Read the trail rules before you set off, because this is a watershed
Bluffdale publishes trail hours of 5am to 11pm, requires dogs on a lead, bans gas powered vehicles, motorcycles and off highway vehicles, and states in plain terms that this is a watershed area. That last point is not decoration on a river that supplies canals feeding four cities. Take rubbish out, keep the dog on the lead, and call your pass on the left, because the paved trail carries bicycles at speed.
The details
Getting there
Access is from the southern end of the city rather than from the middle of it. The Porter Rockwell Boulevard bridge also gives onto the trail from its north west side, and the 10 foot path along that bridge is the first east to west walking and cycling link south of 12300 South.
Before you go
- Camp Williams holds the ground on the southern side and is closed to casual public recreation.
- Dogs must be on a lead and gas powered vehicles are banned outright.
- The 1899 plant survives as a forebay and foundations, not as a building.
- Spring runoff changes the water and the low ground beside it completely.
- Trail hours are 5am to 11pm, which is longer than any park in the city.
Walk Bluffdale City Park and the arena at its west end
2400 W 14400 South · Free · Year round
The city's own flagship, on 14400 South, and it is a quieter and more ordinary place than the county park a mile away. Roughly twenty two acres carrying central fields, a north field and a west field, a large playground, a pavilion, a stage, restrooms, basketball, four pickleball courts, horseshoe pits, a sand volleyball court, picnic tables and paths.
The interesting part is the western end, where the Bluffdale Equestrian Park shares the same published address. An equestrian arena inside a municipal park is a survival rather than an amenity: it is the piece of the old large lot horse valley that the city kept when everything around it turned into streets. The park page covers both halves and what each is used for.
The stage is the piece most people walk past
A permanent stage in a city park of this size is unusual, and it is what allows a concert, a youth night and a family festival to run on the same ground across a single week without a marquee going up. During Old West Days that stage is doing a good deal of the work, and for the other fifty weeks of the year it is a low concrete shape at the edge of a field that most visitors never think about.
Two addresses on 14400 South are easy to confuse
The park and the arena share 2400 West 14400 South, and the Parks Department itself is listed a little to the east at 2222 West 14400 South. If a booking or a permit is the reason for the visit rather than a walk, the department address is the one to use, and 801-254-2200 is the number. It is a small distinction that has sent people to the wrong end of the same street.
The details
Getting there
The site fronts 14400 South with its own parking. While 14600 South is closed, come in from Redwood Road or from 2700 West rather than attempting to cross the middle of the city, and allow for the published detours.
Before you go
- Four pickleball courts here, against sixteen at the county park a mile away.
- The arena is the July venue and is otherwise a fenced ring of ground.
- Field and pavilion bookings go through the city's own reservation system.
- The Parks Department is listed at a separate address on the same street.
- This is the parade and festival ground during Old West Days, so check the calendar.
Ride the four miles of trail that opened in December 2025
Along the Mountain View Corridor · Free · Year round
When UDOT opened four miles of new Mountain View Corridor freeway through Bluffdale at 7pm on 19 December 2025, four months ahead of schedule, it opened four miles of twelve foot paved multiuse trail alongside it and five new pedestrian bridges over it. That is a material addition to a city with roughly sixteen miles of paths, and it appeared in a single evening.
It is an honest sort of ride rather than a scenic one: wide, flat, new, fast, and next to a working freeway with wildlife fencing along it. What it does is connect, which is the whole point of it. The corridor page sets out what opened, what it changed on Redwood Road and what is still to come.
Five pedestrian bridges is the number that matters here
A new freeway normally severs a place. Five bridges built for people rather than cars is the difference between a corridor that cuts the western edge of the city in half and one that can be crossed on foot or on a bicycle at five points. If you are weighing a street on the western side, walking one of those crossings is a better use of twenty minutes than any amount of map reading.
The trail is the state's, so its rules and its future are UDOT's
This is not a city path. Surfacing, closures during future construction and any connection into the wider corridor trail are UDOT decisions. The corridor trail as a whole runs a long way north of here and is covered on the Herriman companion, along with the freeway conversion announced for the section north of Porter Rockwell Boulevard, which is a separate project again.
The details
Getting there
The trail runs the length of the new four mile section with the five pedestrian bridges as its crossings. Access is from the western streets rather than from the freeway itself, and the surface is new tarmac throughout.
Before you go
- It opened on 19 December 2025 and is genuinely new ground.
- There is no shade anywhere along it. In July, ride early or late.
- Wildlife fencing runs alongside the road, so stay on the trail side of it.
- The five crossings are the useful part if you are weighing a western address.
- Future construction on the corridor is UDOT's, so check before a long ride.
The two big parks
The county's park and the city's, a mile apart and nothing alike.
Bluffdale is unusual in having a county regional park and a municipal flagship within a mile of each other, and visitors reliably conflate them. They have different owners, different hours, different booking systems and completely different reasons to go. Here is how they actually differ.
| Wardle Fields Regional Park | Bluffdale City Main Park | |
|---|---|---|
| Who runs it | Salt Lake County, on the old Wardle family farm | The City of Bluffdale, with the Equestrian Park at its west end |
| Size | About 40 developed acres of an 80 acre site | Roughly twenty two acres of fields, courts and an arena |
| What is unusual | A 25 foot watchtower, racing zip lines, a 300 foot bouldering wall and sixteen pickleball courts | A permanent stage and a working equestrian arena inside a municipal park |
| Splash pad | Yes, county hours, noon to 8pm Wednesday to Sunday in season | No; the city's own pads are at Vintage Park and Independence Park |
| Busiest when | Summer weekends from mid morning, and it gets genuinely full | Three nights in July for the rodeo, and the Old West Days block after it |
| Who to ring | Salt Lake County Parks and Recreation, on the county reservation system | Bluffdale City Hall on 801-254-2200 |
Neither is the better one and a good day here uses both. The county park is where a visiting household will actually spend the morning; the city park is the civic ground, the arena and the festival site. The practical difference is that only one of them can be booked or queried through the city, and the busier of the two is the one that cannot.
Before you go
Sort the road first, because the middle of this city is shut.
Three things go wrong here and all three are avoidable in a few minutes: routing across a closed street, arriving at the county park on a day the water is off, and turning up for a celebration in the wrong half of the summer.
Sort before you drive
- Your route, because 14600 South has been closed between Spring View Parkway and 1010 West since 17 November 2025
- Rodeo tickets and mutton bustin places, which open on a published date in July and are limited by night
- A pavilion booking through Salt Lake County if Wardle Fields is the plan, or through the city for anywhere else
- Which week of Old West Days you actually want, because in 2026 they were twelve days apart
- Whether you are heading for the county park or the city park, since they are a mile and two owners apart
Check on the day
- The 14600 South closure status, on 385-247-0775 or [email protected]
- Wardle Fields splash pad hours with the county, since the published window is Wednesday to Sunday only
- City splash pad status at Vintage Park and Independence Park, which run Memorial Day to Labor Day
- Whether the arena has an event on, because parking around 14400 South fills early when it does
- Trail conditions on the river, since the low ground changes completely during spring runoff
Turn up and it is fine
- Day Ranch Park, free and open, and the one place here that works on a cold dry afternoon
- The Jordan River Parkway at the southern end of the city, open 5am to 11pm all year
- The new corridor trail on the western edge, twelve feet wide and open since December 2025
- Bluffdale City Main Park on any day the arena is dark, which is most of them
Two of these six are not the city's, and that changes who can help you. Wardle Fields Regional Park belongs to Salt Lake County and the Mountain View Corridor and its trail belong to UDOT. Bluffdale City Hall cannot confirm county splash pad hours, take a county pavilion booking or tell you when a state highway crew will be working. Everything else on this list, including the arena, Day Ranch and the city's own splash pads, is the City of Bluffdale's, and 801-254-2200 is the number that helps.
What this list leaves out, and why
- The Cottonwood canyons and their resorts, which sit at the far north east corner of this county and are shared by all eighteen of its cities. A long drive does not convert somebody else's canyon into a Bluffdale attraction, and the county pages handle them.
- The Point, the redevelopment of the former state prison ground. It is over the boundary in Draper and Draper's companion carries it. What belongs here is the doorstep relationship, which has its own page.
- Blackridge Reservoir and Butterfield Canyon, which are Herriman's, one boundary west. Butterfield Canyon Road has in any case been closed by a washout since 22 July 2026, as of 7 August 2026, with no published reopening date.
- The Jordan River Parkway as a whole, a 45 mile county system with a paddling version and connections at both ends of the valley. This list takes only the first reach, where the river enters the county.
- Camp Williams and the federal data centre on it, which are physical and civic facts about the southern boundary rather than places anyone visits. The training site is closed to casual public recreation.
- The neighbourhood parks, of which this city has several good ones. They are amenities for the streets around them rather than reasons to cross a valley, and they appear on the city guide instead.
