City Cottonwood Heights, Salt Lake County
The city between the canyons, on the southeast bench of the valley
Cottonwood Heights, the city at the two gates
About 33,617 people on the southeast bench of the Salt Lake Valley, between two creeks and below two canyon roads that begin at the city line. The canyons themselves belong to the county and have their own pages. Below them is the everyday ground: the boulevard, the bus, the city's own canyon, and what a season of storm mornings asks of a household here.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
Cottonwood Heights is a bench city of about 33,617 people on the southeast edge of the Salt Lake Valley, and its defining fact is that two mountain roads begin at its eastern line. The road up Big Cottonwood and the road up Little Cottonwood both start inside the city, only a few minutes apart along Wasatch Boulevard, with a park and ride between them. That puts four ski resorts roughly twenty to thirty five minutes from most front doors here, and it also means that for four months of winter this address is a piece of ski infrastructure whether or not anyone in the house skis. The canyons themselves belong to the county and have their own pages. The ground below them is the subject here: the boulevard, the bus, the city's own canyon, and what a purchase on this bench actually asks.
Buying or selling in Cottonwood Heights?
The shape of it
Two gates, one trail and a park and ride at the corner of both
Cottonwood Heights occupies the southeast bench of the Salt Lake Valley between Big Cottonwood Creek and Little Cottonwood Creek, with a ridge running through the middle of town that separates the two creek valleys. Holladay and Murray sit to the north, Midvale to the west, Sandy to the south, and national forest to the east. About 33,617 people lived here at the 2020 census, across roughly 9.23 square miles, at an elevation around 4,820 feet. The city is young: residents voted for incorporation in 2004 and it became a city on January 14, 2005.
The fact that sets this place apart is that two canyon roads begin at its eastern edge. The Big Cottonwood road (SR-190) starts where Fort Union Boulevard runs out of boulevard at Wasatch Boulevard. The Little Cottonwood road (SR-210) starts at 9400 South on the city's southern line, with Sandy on the far bank of the creek. The two gates are only a few minutes apart along Wasatch Boulevard, and the 6200 South park and ride sits between them, which is where the ski buses that serve the canyons pick up. A third opening is a footpath rather than a road: Ferguson Canyon leaves the top of Timberline Drive with no vehicle access at all, and it is the one canyon the city itself owns.
This city does not own the big canyons. Four resorts, two watersheds and a set of rules that change with every storm are county subjects with their own pages, and they are linked from here rather than retold. Near the Big Cottonwood gate stands the Old Mill, the granite shell of an 1883 paper mill and the most photographed object in town; its walls are private and their future is unsettled. What the bench itself holds is the boulevard, the bench streets, the city's own canyon, and the everyday weight of living below two mountain roads.
Cottonwood Heights at a glance
33,617
people at the 2020 census
2005
the year the city was incorporated
2
canyon roads that begin at the city line
4,820 ft
elevation on the bench
The canyons themselves are county subjects, not city ones. What the canyons are, which resort is which and what the watershed forbids sit on the Cottonwood canyons page. What the road requires in winter, from the traction law to parking to closures, sits on the canyon winter access page. Read those two before a first winter here.
The year here
Four months of logistics and eight months of an ordinary bench suburb
From about December to early April this address is a piece of ski infrastructure whether or not anybody in the household skis. Traffic bound for four resorts funnels along Wasatch Boulevard and turns at one of two junctions inside the city. The bus routes that serve those resorts start and stop here. When avalanche control work closes a canyon road, it closes at a gate that is somebody's nearest junction, and the vehicles that were queuing for it wait on city streets.
The payoff is direct, and it is why people pay for this bench. A weeknight can become a real ski trip because the resorts sit twenty to thirty five minutes up the road rather than across a state, and a resident learns the storm patterns and the quiet windows that a visitor never sees. Little of that is much use to someone passing through, and all of it is worth a great deal to someone who lives here. The doorstep page takes what a season of that actually looks like.
The other eight months read like any well kept east bench suburb, and that is not a criticism. The boulevard does the shopping. The recreation center does the swimming and the skating. Eight city parks do the evenings. The middle of July does the festival. What changes with the seasons up here is mostly the trailhead parking, which fills earlier every summer, and the creeks, which run hard enough in late spring to make a crossing a real decision.
The one piece of ground the city genuinely owns as recreation is the canyon nobody outside the valley has heard of. Ferguson Canyon leaves the top of a residential street, climbs to an overlook of Big Cottonwood, carries granite crags people have climbed for decades, and allows a leashed dog, which the two big canyons do not. Its own page covers the walk and where to leave the car.
For four months of the year this is a bench suburb with two mountain gates open in its side.
What the city owns
A police force, eight parks and a recreation district that is not the city
For a city that has existed only since 2005, Cottonwood Heights carries an unusual amount of its own machinery. It created a police department in 2008 rather than continuing to contract with the county sheriff. It runs its own planning commission and council out of city hall at 2277 East Bengal Boulevard, and those meetings decide the land use questions that make the local news here. The commercial base is wider than a bench suburb usually carries: offices in the city include Instructure, Dyno Nobel, Extra Space Storage, Breeze Airways and JetBlue.
Land use is genuinely contested here, and two parcels draw most of the argument. The Old Mill near the Big Cottonwood gate, the 1883 granite shell described above, sits under a demolition proposal that residents have organized against. A former gravel pit on Wasatch Boulevard, the largest undeveloped parcel on the bench and the one closest to the Big Cottonwood gate, is zoned for a denser mixed use redevelopment that has been debated for years. Both are matters of public record, and city hall on 801-944-7100 will tell you where either stands today.
The recreation center at 7500 South 2700 East is the piece worth getting right before you read a tax notice. It is run by the Cottonwood Heights Parks and Recreation Service Area, an independent special taxing district that is a separate entity from both the city and Salt Lake County. Part of the property tax paid by residents inside its boundary goes to it, and fees cover the rest. The building dates to 1971 and carries an Olympic size ice sheet, several indoor and outdoor pools, a dive tank and water slides, a gymnasium, an indoor walking track, racquetball courts and outdoor pickleball courts.
Eight city parks fill in the rest, among them Butler Park at 7500 South 2700 East and Ferguson Park at 7722 South Prospector Drive, which is now the place to start a Ferguson Canyon walk. The county contributes a library: Whitmore Library at 2197 East Fort Union Boulevard sits on the commercial spine a few minutes from the recreation center, so the boulevard carries the two indoor places a wet February afternoon actually needs. The Fort Union page takes the boulevard, including the 1853 militia fort the whole corridor is named after.
The recreation center has its own tax line, its own board and its own boundary. It is not a city department.
The six deeper pages
Six deeper pages, and none of them retells a canyon guide
Everything The Local has written about Cottonwood Heights: the ranked six things to do, the home canyon seen from the bench below it, the boulevard and the 1853 fort behind its name, the bus routes and lots that start here, the city's own canyon at the top of a residential street, and the homework a purchase on this bench carries.
Quick answers
Cottonwood Heights, answered
On the southeast bench of the Salt Lake Valley, between Big Cottonwood Creek and Little Cottonwood Creek, with a ridge between the two creek valleys running through the middle of town. It covers about 9.23 square miles at an elevation around 4,820 feet, with Holladay and Murray to the north, Midvale to the west, Sandy to the south and national forest to the east. Two canyon highways begin at the city line.
Because the roads up Big Cottonwood and Little Cottonwood both begin at the city's eastern edge. The Big Cottonwood gate sits at the east end of Fort Union Boulevard where it meets Wasatch Boulevard, and the Little Cottonwood gate sits at 9400 South on the city's southern line, with Sandy on the far bank of the creek. The two gates are only a few minutes apart along Wasatch Boulevard, with the 6200 South park and ride between them.
On January 14, 2005, after residents voted for incorporation the year before. It is one of the newest cities in Utah, though the ground was settled from 1849. The city created its own police department in 2008 rather than continuing to contract with the county sheriff, and it runs its own planning commission and council out of city hall at 2277 East Bengal Boulevard.
No, and this catches new residents out on their first tax notice. The center at 7500 South 2700 East is run by the Cottonwood Heights Parks and Recreation Service Area, an independent special taxing district that is a separate entity from both the city and Salt Lake County. Residents inside its boundary pay part of their property tax to it, and fees cover the rest. The facility dates to 1971.
In Ferguson Canyon, yes, on a leash, and that is exactly why locals use it. The trailhead is at the top of Timberline Drive, and the city has built Ferguson Park at 7722 South Prospector Drive at the bottom of it, with its own off leash area. Big and Little Cottonwood are a different matter, because both are protected Salt Lake City watershed with a dog ban that applies even inside a vehicle. The Ferguson Canyon page covers the walk and the parking.
It is the city's summer festival at Butler Park, 7500 South 2700 East. In recent years the city moved it off its old Pioneer Day timing into mid July and replaced the fireworks with a drone show, so older listings that still put it in late July with fireworks are out of date. Because the dates and format have changed, confirm the current schedule with Cottonwood Heights on 801-944-7100.
The granite shell of a paper mill built in 1883 for the Deseret News at 6851 South Big Cottonwood Canyon Road, near the Big Cottonwood gate, using stone left over from the Salt Lake Temple quarry. A fire gutted the interior in 1893 and left the stone walls, which have stood ever since. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. The walls are privately owned, and a proposal to demolish them has been filed with the city, so their future is unsettled.
By UTA canyon bus, and one route is published as starting here. Route CS2 runs from the 6200 South Wasatch Boulevard park and ride up Little Cottonwood to Alta, and other canyon routes serve Snowbird, Solitude and Brighton from nearby park and rides. A one way ride is a low flat fare, and free with a resort season pass, an Ikon pass or the Salt Lake Ski Super Pass. The ski bus page has the routes, and confirm the current season and fare with UTA.
It suits a household that wants mountain access as an everyday fact rather than a vacation, and that is willing to pay a bench price and run a winter vehicle for it. Four resorts sit twenty to thirty five minutes up two roads that begin at the city line, the boulevard carries full services, and downtown and the airport are both inside half an hour in ordinary traffic. Against that, storm mornings rearrange the local road network and land use here is genuinely contested.
Weighing this bench? Start with which side of the ridge
Two things decide a purchase here and neither shows up in a photograph. The first is where on the slope the house sits, because elevation changes the snow load, the view and the price inside one survey mile. The second is what a storm morning does to your particular junction, which is a different question at 6200 South than at 9400 South. Tell me what you are weighing and I will connect you with a Salt Lake County partner agent who knows this bench.
Or call Scott: (435) 357-4345or send Scott a message
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