City Kearns, Salt Lake County
A west-side grid town with an Olympic oval in the middle
Kearns, and the four hundred meters that changed it
Kearns is a grid town of about 36,700 people on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley, best known for the Utah Olympic Oval, the only 400 meter speed skating track in the state. An army laid these streets out on dry farm ground in 1942 and left in 1946; a developer bought the roads and the pipes, and the postwar suburb went up on the base's plan. Then the 2002 Winter Games dropped that oval on Cougar Lane, next to 53 acres of park and three indoor pools, and gave the place a second thing to be. This hub is the map to seven Kearns pages, and it hands the wider valley to the county pages everyone here shares.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
Kearns is a city of about 36,700 people on 4.63 square miles of flat grid on the west side of the Salt Lake Valley, at the foot of the Oquirrh range. It is best known for the Utah Olympic Oval, the only 400 meter speed skating track in the state, which the 2002 Winter Games built on Cougar Lane beside a 53 acre park and a fitness center with three year round indoor pools. The streets came from a World War II army training base, Camp Kearns, that closed in 1946, and the town was incorporated as a city only in 2024, so most of what runs the place, the water, the police, the fire, the permits and the pools, still comes from separate agencies older than the city. This hub is the map to seven deeper Kearns pages, and it hands the canyons, the lake and the Oquirrh foothills to the county pages the whole valley shares.
Kearns at a glance
400 m
the only speed skating track of its length in Utah
1942
the year an army built the streets this town still uses
53
acres of park next door to the ice
4.63
square miles, corner to corner
Who runs what
The city is new, but almost nothing that runs it is
Kearns became a city on May 1, 2024, and elected its first mayor and a four district council in 2025 and 2026. What the young city runs is short: a property tax rate and the council. Almost every service you actually use at a Kearns address, the water, the police, the fire, the building permits, the pools and the library, comes from a separate agency, most of them older than the city. The single most useful thing a newcomer can learn is which one owns the question being asked.
| The place or service | Who runs it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| The Utah Olympic Oval, 5662 South Cougar Lane | The Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation | A venue rather than a city facility, with its own admission, its own season, its own waiver, and a competition calendar that can close the ice to the public |
| The fitness center, the park and the Element Event Center | The Oquirrh Recreation and Parks District | A separate taxing district with three elected trustees, on 801-966-5555, whose membership has nothing to do with the Oval next door except on Monday skate nights |
| Planning, permits, inspections and addressing | The Greater Salt Lake Municipal Services District | The city runs no planning counter of its own; building work goes through the district on, which serves six other communities too |
| Police | The Unified Police Department of Greater Salt Lake | A regional department rather than a city force, from the Kearns precinct at 4250 West 5415 South |
| Fire and ambulance | The Unified Fire Authority | A regional authority, from the station at 4444 West 5415 South |
| Water and sewer | The Kearns Improvement District | Another elected board, formed in 1957 to run a system the army had built, and serving parts of neighboring cities as well |
| Kearns Library, 4275 West 5345 South | Salt Lake County Library | A county branch on a city street, with county hours and a county card, on 801-943-4636 |
The most common mistake here is assuming the campus is one place. The Oval and the fitness center share a lane, a parking approach and a name in most people's heads, and they are run by two organizations with two sets of prices, two seasons and two memberships. A fitness center pass does not get you onto the ice, except on Monday skate nights when it does. An Oval admission does not get you into a pool at any time. Deciding which building you are actually going to, before you leave, is the whole of the trick.
The year here
A year that swaps surfaces rather than opening and closing
Most Utah towns have an outdoor season and a shut season. Kearns has neither, because its two anchors are both indoors and run all twelve months. What changes instead is the surface you are standing on. In a typical year the Oval puts its public sessions on the 400 meter long track from August through March, then moves them onto the two hockey sheets from April through August, which makes the most distinctive thing you can do in this town seasonal in a way almost nobody expects. The Utah Olympic Oval page has the prices, the waiver and the rest of the mechanics.
The water runs the other way. Three indoor pools carry the fitness center through the winter, and the outdoor pools and the water feature open in late spring, usually toward the end of May. So a Kearns year is ice in the cold half and water in the warm half, on two sites about forty street numbers apart, run by two organizations that do not share a ticket. The Oquirrh Park and pools page takes the water, the 53 acres and the district that owns them.
The civic calendar peaks in August, and it peaks on the same ground. The district's big summer festival turns the whole campus, the fitness center, the water feature and the Oval, into one event for a day, which is the one day the campus behaves as the single place everyone assumes it already is. The city runs its own Kearns Hometown Celebration in the same stretch of the calendar. Dates shift year to year, so check with the organizers. The ranked list of things to do sorts what genuinely justifies a journey from what is simply good to have at the end of your street.
A town whose best day is whichever one the ice is open, and whose best week is the one in August when the ice and the water are the same event.
The wider valley
The county's big subjects are close from here, and none of them are this town's
Kearns sits with the Oquirrh range at its back and the whole valley in front of it, which makes proximity the easiest argument to reach for and the easiest one to overstate. Four county pages carry the shared subjects properly, so here is where each one lives.
The west wall
The Oquirrh side
The range at this town's back, the mine cut into it, and the string of places along its foot.
Read the guide
Days out
Weekends in the valley
The county's outings priced and planned, for the Saturdays one grid town cannot fill alone.
Read the guide
Across the valley
The Cottonwood canyons
Four resorts on two roads, and the watershed rules that decide what you may take up them.
Read the guide
Four miles east
The Jordan River Parkway
The valley's long paved spine, which this grid reaches by car rather than by doorstep.
Read the guideCheck the town line, not the mailing address. A lot of what is written about this area files Kearns addresses under Salt Lake City, because the Oval's own postal address does, and some of it borrows names that belong to West Jordan or West Valley City instead. The municipal boundary, not the postal town, decides which police precinct, which planning counter and which water bill an address gets. Confirm the boundary before you draw any conclusion from an address.
If you only have one day
One version of a good day in Kearns
Early
Stand at the cannon first
The headquarters gun from the wartime base that drew these streets, on a corner most traffic passes without a look.
The base page
Late morning
Get on the long track
Seven dollars, a signed waiver and a pair of rented skates put you on the ice the records were set on.
The Oval page
Afternoon
Cross to the water and the grass
Fifty three acres, a skate park, and three indoor pools that do not care what the weather is doing.
The campus page
Evening
Work out what happens next
A date won in 2024, and the long track events the plan puts back on this ice for 2034.
The 2034 pageThe Kearns companion
Seven pages, and three of them are about the same four hundred meters of ground
Everything The Local has written about Kearns: the ranked list of what genuinely justifies a journey inside 4.63 square miles, the Oval and the case for the fastest ice anywhere, the park and the pools that share its lane and share none of its tickets, the 2034 date and what is actually settled about it, the vanished army base that drew this street grid, and what an address here asks of a household in practice.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Quick answers
Kearns, answered
On the west side of the Salt Lake Valley, about 4,530 feet up, covering 4.63 square miles with 36,723 residents at the 2020 census. West Valley City wraps it on the north and the west, Taylorsville sits to the east and West Jordan to the south, and the Oquirrh range rises behind it. It does not reach the Jordan River, which runs about four to five miles east, so the parkway there is a drive from Kearns rather than a doorstep.
The Utah Olympic Oval. The building at 5662 South Cougar Lane holds Utah's only 400 meter speed skating track, two international sized ice sheets and a 442 meter running track, it was built for the 2002 Winter Games, and it is named in the bid that won Salt Lake City the 2034 Winter Games. Next to it sit 53 acres of park and a fitness center with three year round indoor pools. The town is also built on the street grid of Camp Kearns, a World War II army base.
Yes, on posted public sessions, and the surface depends on the month. In a typical year sessions run on the 400 meter long track from August through March and move to the two hockey sheets from April through August. Admission is seven dollars for adults and youth and six dollars for seniors 61 and over, with young children free. Skate rental is another seven dollars. A waiver has to be signed online before you arrive, and the schedule is worth checking first, because competitions can close the ice.
The plan puts long track speed skating back on the Utah Olympic Oval, the venue it was built for in 2002. Figure skating and short track are assigned to the Maverik Center in West Valley City, and Olympic hockey to the Delta Center in downtown Salt Lake City. Salt Lake City won the 2034 Games in 2024, and the venue plan belongs to the organizing committee, so treat any single event as planned rather than fixed until the schedule is published.
A city, since May 1, 2024. House Bill 35 of the 2024 legislative session converted Utah's metro townships into cities of the third class, and Kearns adopted the name City of Kearns by ordinance that June. Before that it was a metro township from 2017, a township from 2002, and unincorporated Salt Lake County ground for about sixty years before that. The town redrew its voting map from five districts to four in early 2025 and elected its first mayor, Jesse Valdez, who was sworn in on January 12, 2026.
No, and it surprises most newcomers. Almost every service a resident touches is run by a regional body rather than by the young city, and each one keeps its own office and its own phone line. Building permits, inspections and addressing go through the Greater Salt Lake Municipal Services District. Water and sewer come from the Kearns Improvement District, the pools and park from the Oquirrh Recreation and Parks District, and the library from Salt Lake County.
Less than in most towns on this site, because the two best things here are both ticketed. Oquirrh Park's 53 acres, its walking paths, its playground, its ball diamonds and the Kearns Skate Park are free and open, and so is Kearns Library at 4275 West 5345 South, a Salt Lake County branch. Standing at the cannon in the veterans memorial park costs nothing. The ice, the pools and the water feature all charge.
4.63 square miles, small even by this valley's standards, with 36,723 residents at the 2020 census. The useful way to hold that is against what is inside it: a 400 meter Olympic speed skating oval, three year round indoor pools, 53 acres of park, a county library branch and a police precinct, in a footprint you can drive corner to corner in well under fifteen minutes. What defines Kearns is the density of public facilities, not of ground.
Because the army needed flat, cheap ground in a hurry. It marked out about 5,450 acres of dry farmland on the valley's west side in 1942, built a training base called Camp Kearns on roughly 1,400 of them, and put tens of thousands of airmen through it before it closed in 1946. The buildings were auctioned in 1948, a developer bought the streets and the pipes, and the postwar suburb went up on the army's road plan rather than a pioneer plat. The town is standing on a base layout.
Thinking about Kearns? Start with which grid the street belongs to
Kearns reads as one flat rectangle and behaves as several: the original base grid in the middle, the blocks around the Cougar Lane campus, the newer streets toward the west edge, and the highway side on the east. What a street backs onto matters more here than a name on a listing, and two addresses a quarter of a mile apart can sit very differently. Tell me what you are weighing and I will put you with a Salt Lake County partner agent who works this side of the valley, and stay on the file for the research and the financing side.
Or call Scott: (435) 357-4345or send Scott a message
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