Magna, the copper town that kept its old Main Street

Magna is at the western edge of the Salt Lake Valley, tucked against the foot of the Oquirrh Mountains with the south shore of the Great Salt Lake past its northern edge. Interstate 80 runs across the top of town, SR-201 runs east toward the rest of the valley, and SR-111 heads south along the bench. The ZIP is 84044, and the 2020 census counted 29,251 residents.

A city, and a new one. Magna spent roughly a century as unincorporated county ground, became a metro township in the countywide reorganization of 2017, and converted to a full city on May 1, 2024, under House Bill 35. It runs on a five-member elected council with one member serving as mayor, and it contracts out most services rather than staffing departments of its own.

You can visit it, but not from Magna. The public viewpoint is the Rio Tinto Kennecott overlook, reached from a visitor center at 12732 Bacchus Highway in Herriman, around the far south end of the range, and every visitor rides a shuttle up from there. There is no overlook, trail or road to the pit from the Magna side. As of 2026 tickets are six dollars, bought in advance, with the last shuttle up leaving at 2:30 pm.

Three things, in rough order of how far people travel for them. The Bingham Canyon Mine, which the town was built to serve and which is the largest human-made excavation on earth. Main Street, an intact commercial street built between 1904 and 1929 and listed on the National Register in January 2021 with 38 contributing buildings. And the Empress Theatre on that street, a 1916 building listed on its own in 1985 and still running full seasons under a volunteer company.

Yes. The park, its visitor center and its marina sit at 13312 W 1075 S in Magna, reached from exit 104 on Interstate 80, which makes this the county's own doorstep on the lake. It is a gated state park, not a free viewpoint: day use is 10 dollars per private vehicle for up to eight people, 5 dollars for a Utah resident senior vehicle, and 2 dollars for anyone on foot or by bike. The park is open sunrise to sunset, and the visitor center keeps its own shorter hours.

Walking the historic street costs nothing, and the buildings are the point, so a self-guided hour on Main Street is the best free thing here. The city parks are free, including Copper Park with its skate park, and the county's 62-acre regional park on 7200 West is free with a splash pad on summer hours. The ranger talk at the state park is free once you are inside, but the gate fee is not, and the theater and the concert venue are both ticketed.

A single day covers a visitor properly if you start early. The mine overlook takes about an hour plus a long drive around the range, Main Street is an hour on foot, the state park is an afternoon, and a show at the theater fills the evening. What one day cannot do is combine the mine and a matinee comfortably, because the overlook's last shuttle up leaves at 2:30 pm.

The name came from the mining company, not from a settler. The ground was farmed as Pleasant Green before the copper arrived, and when Utah Copper began building its mill at the foot of the range in 1906, the operation took the Latin word for great or superior as its name. The town took the mill's name with it, and the older Pleasant Green name survives locally on a school, a park and the cemetery.

For a specific reason rather than a general one, which is an honest answer for a town this size. If any of these four appeals, the trip is worth it: standing on a rim above a working open pit, walking an intact early-1900s commercial street of a kind the rest of the valley demolished, sitting in a 1916 auditorium watching a volunteer company, or paying at a gate and walking a beach on an inland sea. If none does, the county pages cover the wider valley better than a day here would.