By Scott Buehler, Moving UtahRide the shuttle to the Bingham Canyon overlook
12732 Bacchus Hwy · 6 dollars · Year round, 9:30am to 2:30pm · Directions
The largest human-made excavation on the planet is cut into the back of the range that fills Magna's southern window, and you can stand on a platform above it for six dollars. Rio Tinto runs the viewing point as the Kennecott Visitor Experience: an advance ticket, a shuttle up from the visitor center, a working pit below you and two levels of exhibits behind you. Under-fives go free, and the proceeds go to the operator's charitable foundation.
The thing to fix in your head before you set off is the geography, because it defeats nearly everybody. The visitor center is at 12732 Bacchus Highway on the Herriman side, at the far southern end of the range, which from Magna is a long way round by road. Magna's Bingham Canyon Mine page covers the pit itself, the 2013 landslide and how the booking works.
The scale is the entire point and photographs do not carry it
Every visitor says the same thing and every visitor is right: the haul trucks on the benches below read as toys until somebody tells you each one is the size of a house, and then the pit reorganizes itself in your head and stops being a picture. That is what you are paying six dollars for. An hour is about right, most of it spent looking at one thing.
It opens and shuts on the operator's terms, not a park calendar
This is access granted inside a working industrial site, and the operator has suspended it more than once over the years. It runs year round, including holidays, from 9:30 in the morning to 2:30 in the afternoon, with a shuttle every thirty minutes and the last one back by four. Buy online in advance; a same-day purchase at the gate is not guaranteed. Because a working mine can close its gate on short notice, check the operator's own page the week you go.
The details
Getting there
Everyone rides the shuttle from the visitor center; there is no private driving up to the rim and no access from the Magna side of the range at all. Allow generously for the road time, because the route rounds the mountains rather than crossing them.
Before you go
- Book online before you travel; a same day purchase at the gate is not guaranteed.
- The last shuttle leaves at 2:30 in the afternoon, so an afternoon start does not work.
- Cancellation is free up to one hour before the booked slot.
- Service dogs are permitted; emotional support animals are not.
- No drones, firearms, alcohol or smoking, and seat belts are required on the shuttle.
Walk Magna Main Street end to end
Magna Main Street · Free · Year round, daylight · Directions
Salt Lake County tore down most of its early commercial streets and built shopping centers where they stood. Magna did not, largely because nobody came to redevelop it, and the result is a street of one and two part commercial block buildings put up almost entirely between 1904 and 1929. The National Register added the district in January 2021: 15.33 acres, 38 contributing buildings out of 42, plus one garden site.
It is a walk rather than a visit. Nothing is ticketed, the district is small enough to cover in an hour, and the interest is in the frontages, the parapets and the brick rather than in any single building. The city also rebuilt the road under it through the fall of 2025. Magna's Main Street page covers the district, the rebuild and what the theater is staging this season.
You are looking at a street that got its listing because of an earthquake
The magnitude 5.7 quake of 18 March 2020 was centered close to here, and it did what shaking does to unreinforced brick: it took parapets and facades off buildings up and down this street. The National Register nomination that followed was pursued partly to open historic preservation tax credits for the repairs. So the listing is not a decorative honor, it is a repair mechanism, and any scaffolding you still see is the reason it exists.
Film crews got here before the tourists did
Location scouts have used this street for decades because it reads as a small American town of no particular decade, which is exactly what a period production wants and exactly what the rest of this valley cannot supply. Film and television crews have shot here for that reason. If the street feels oddly familiar on a first walk, that is why, and it is a more useful thing to know than any plaque on it.
The details
Getting there
Street parking runs the length of the district, and the whole listed area is 15.33 acres, so one parking space serves the entire walk. The Empress Theatre stands at the western end of the run at 9104 West.
Before you go
- The street carries two names, Magna Main Street and 2700 South, and both appear in records.
- Independent shop rosters change, so confirm a specific business is trading before traveling for it.
- The roadbed was rebuilt in 2025, so older photographs show a different surface and curb line.
- Some frontages still carry earthquake repair work; treat scaffolding as ordinary rather than as closure.
- The county library and the senior center are both a short walk from the district.
Spend an afternoon at Great Salt Lake State Park
13312 W 1075 S · 10 dollars a vehicle · Sunrise to sunset · Directions
The county's only real doorstep on the lake is in Magna, at the end of 1075 South off exit 104. It is a proper gated state park rather than a pull-off with a view: an entrance fee per vehicle, a visitor center that keeps its own hours, a marina, a campground, an observation deck and two named stretches of shore, Silver Sands Beach and Sunset Beach.
What lifts it above a walk on the sand is the ranger program. Great Salt Lake Snippets is a free fifteen to twenty minute talk that runs with your day-use fee at 2:15 in the afternoon on Friday, Saturday and Sunday through the summer season, out on the visitor center's back deck, no reservation needed. Magna's Great Salt Lake State Park page takes the fees, the hours, the walks and the launch conditions in detail.
The fee at the gate is the thing people are not expecting
A lot of writing about this shoreline describes it as somewhere you simply pull off the interstate and look at the water, and that is not what this is. Day use is 10 dollars for a private vehicle of up to eight people, 5 dollars for a Utah resident senior vehicle, and 2 dollars a head if you arrive on foot or by bicycle. A per-park annual pass pays for itself in a handful of visits.
It is a working harbor, and the water decides what that means
The marina is the county's only one, and its condition follows the lake. The launch ramp has lately been open but shallow, restricted to shallow-draft boats and used at your own risk, with deeper-keeled boats kept on stands rather than in slips. If you are towing anything, call the marina office on 801-250-1898 before you hitch up rather than turning around at the ramp.
The details
Getting there
The park is signed from exit 104 and the approach road runs north from the interstate to the gate. Camping is on site with hookups and primitive beach tent pitches, booked through the state reservation system rather than at the gate.
Before you go
- Check the launch ramp status before towing anything; the water has been shallow.
- The visitor center keeps different hours from the park itself, so arrive inside its window if you want it.
- The free ranger talk needs no reservation, but the beach and full moon walks do and they cap numbers.
- Fire restrictions are common here in high summer and can rule out charcoal and open flame, so check before planning a cookout.
- The park telephone is 801-828-0787 and the marina office is a separate number.
See a season at the Empress Theatre
9104 W 2700 S · Ticketed · Year round seasons · Directions
A theater built in 1916 to entertain mine workers, still staging full seasons, in a town of under thirty thousand people. It went onto the National Register on 9 May 1985 and remains the only building in Magna listed individually, and its neoclassical front is the most architecturally ambitious thing on the street by a wide margin. In 2026 the marquee reads 110 years on Main.
Since 2006 it has been run by the Oquirrh Hills Performing Arts Alliance, an all-volunteer company that stages musicals, plays and youth productions rather than screening films. The company sets its season show by show, so its own site is the only reliable calendar. If you are building a trip around a particular production, buy from the theater and confirm the date on its own page.
A volunteer company in a listed building is a specific kind of evening
This is community theater in the honest sense: unpaid people staging full-length work in an auditorium older than almost everyone in it. It is a small house, about 178 seats staged in the round, so the room is intimate and the sightlines are short, closer to a village hall than a downtown house.
Book directly, because the season is not on the usual aggregators
Small volunteer venues rarely appear reliably on the big listing platforms, and dates here move with rehearsal schedules and volunteer availability. The alliance sells through its own site. If you are planning a trip around a specific show, buy from the theater and confirm the performance date on its own page rather than on a third party calendar.
The details
Getting there
The Empress fronts the historic street with curbside parking along the district, which makes an evening show and a daylight walk of the street a natural pairing on the same trip.
Before you go
- Buy from the alliance's own site rather than a resale or aggregator listing.
- Shows are announced one at a time, so a season list can go stale quickly.
- The building is a 1916 auditorium, so plan around older seating and older access.
- It is the only individually listed building in Magna, entered on the register in 1985.
- Youth productions run alongside the main season, on their own dates.
Catch a show at The Great Saltair
12408 W Saltair Dr · Ticketed · Event nights only · Directions
A concert hall on the shore of an inland sea, off the same interstate exit as the state park. The present building is the third to carry the name and opened in 1981, and the capacities run about 4,000 inside and up to 7,000 in the outdoor amphitheater, which puts touring acts within ten minutes of Magna's north end several times a season.
It is worth being clear about what this is and is not. It is a ticketed private venue that opens for events and is shut in between, not a historic site you can look round. The name carries more than a century of resort history on this beach, but the thing you are buying a ticket to is a modern hall with a parking lot and a lake behind it.
The outdoor season is the reason to plan around it
The indoor hall runs year round on the promoter's calendar, but the amphitheater is the venue's distinctive asset: an outdoor stage of up to seven thousand with the water behind it, which is a genuinely unusual setting for a summer evening in Utah. If you are choosing between two dates for the same act, the outdoor one is the one to take.
It shares an exit with the state park, and that is a planning fact
Both the beach and the concert hall come off exit 104, so on a show night the approach carries traffic that a Tuesday afternoon does not, and the two can be combined into one trip if the timings suit. An accessible viewing section exists but is limited and runs through an accommodation form, so arrange it in advance rather than at the door.
The details
Getting there
The venue sits on its own access road off the interstate with parking on site. There is no general public access between events, so a daytime drive out to look at it is not a visit.
Before you go
- Check whether your date is in the indoor hall or the outdoor amphitheater; they are different experiences.
- Accessible viewing is limited and runs through an accommodation form, so arrange it ahead.
- The building is the third of the name and dates from 1981, not from the resort era.
- The state park is off the same exit, so an early afternoon there pairs with an evening here.
- There is no walk up access between shows; the site is closed outside events.
Take the morning at Magna Regional Park
4042 S 7200 W · Free · Splash pad on summer hours · Directions
Sixty two acres of Salt Lake County regional park that opened in November 2021, which makes it newer than the city it sits in. The county built it with restrooms, pavilions, walking paths, a multipurpose field, an inclusive destination playground and an inclusive destination splash pad, and the two inclusive facilities are the reason it draws from beyond the town rather than only from the streets around it.
It is free open ground, but the splash pad runs on set summer hours rather than all day, roughly Friday afternoons and weekend middays into the evening. Those are county hours on a county facility, so the number to call about them is the county's, on 385-468-7275, not the city's.
Inclusive is a design specification here, not a description
The county built both the playground and the splash pad to an inclusive destination standard, which covers surfacing, transfer access and equipment rather than a general sentiment. For anyone traveling with a wheelchair or a stroller, that distinction is the difference between a park you can use and one you can only look at, and it is why this entry earns its place over several closer options.
Do not confuse it with the city's own park
Magna has two parks with similar sounding names in ordinary conversation and they are entirely different things. This one is the county's, 62 acres, on 7200 West, opened in 2021. Copper Park is the city's, much smaller, on 2600 South, with a skate park and a long standing car show. Directions given by name alone go wrong here more often than they should.
The details
Getting there
The park fronts 7200 West with its own parking, on the eastern edge of the town rather than in the historic grid, which puts it a few minutes' drive from Main Street.
Before you go
- The splash pad runs Friday afternoons and weekend middays in summer, not all day.
- It is a county facility, so county parks on 385-468-7275 is the right number for it.
- The playground and the splash pad are both built as inclusive destination facilities.
- At 62 acres it is by far the largest piece of public open ground inside the town.
- This is not Copper Park; that is the city's smaller park on 2600 South.
Drop in on Magna Copper Park
8975 W 2600 S · Free · Daylight, and one big weekend · Directions
The city's own park, and the only substantial piece of ground the city owns rather than the county. It has a skate park the city opened, a reservable pavilion, restrooms, a playground and a sports field, plus a ball diamond, a basketball court, tennis, volleyball, horseshoes, soccer and a fenced area that used to be a dog run.
Once a year it becomes the biggest thing in town. The Labor Day car show and picnic has run for more than twenty years, free to attend and about twenty dollars to show a vehicle, with a couple of hundred cars on the grass. Magna's Copper Park page covers the amenities, the car show and the address to map to.
The skate park is the reason a visitor would come
Everything else here is neighborhood infrastructure, honestly assessed. The skate park is not: it is a concrete skate facility of a kind a town this size rarely has, and it draws riders from beyond the streets around it. It is the only entry on this list a skater would cross town for, which is worth saying out loud on a list that otherwise runs to theater, geology and a beach.
The address and the acreage are worth a second look
Two small things are worth knowing before you map it. The address turns up two ways online; the one that matches the local grid is 8975 West at 2600 South, so map to that. And the listed acreage looks too small for everything the park is said to hold, so trust the amenity list over the acreage figure.
The details
Getting there
The park sits inside the old street grid a few blocks south of Main Street with curbside parking, which makes it an easy add-on to a walk of the historic district rather than a separate trip.
Before you go
- The skate park has no posted hours, size or rules, so treat it as open ground in daylight.
- Pavilion reservations go through the city; the county number does not cover this park.
- The fenced former dog area is not maintained for that purpose, so do not plan on it.
- Shade is limited, which matters on a valley floor afternoon in July.
- Check the car show date with the organizing club each year; it has moved within the weekend.
Two ends of one small town
The old grid and the interstate edge
For a visitor this town divides north to south rather than east to west. The old grid in the middle holds the street, the theater, the library and the city's own park, all of it walkable and all of it free to look at. The interstate edge at the top holds the beach, the marina and the concert hall, all of it ticketed or gated and none of it walkable from anywhere. Both are worth a half day, and they ask completely different things of you.
| The old grid | The interstate edge | |
|---|---|---|
| What is there | The historic street, the 1916 theater, the county library, the senior center and Copper Park | The state park with its beaches and marina, and the concert hall on the same access road |
| What it costs | Free to walk; a ticket only if you go into the theater | A gate fee per vehicle at the park, and a ticket at the hall |
| How you move around | On foot, because the whole district is fifteen acres | By car, because nothing up here connects to anything else on foot |
| Best hours | Daylight for the architecture, evening for a performance | Late afternoon into sunset, which is what the shore is for |
| Turn up or plan | Turn up, any daylight hour, and the walk works | Plan, because hours, fees and the ramp condition all move |
| What can go wrong | A specific shop or show is not on that day | Arriving after the visitor center closes, or towing a boat to a shallow ramp |
One end is not better than the other; they answer different questions. The grid is the town itself, on foot and at no cost. The interstate edge is what the rest of the county drives out here for, and everything on it has a gate or a ticket. Anyone looking at an address should see both within the same hour of the same day, because the gap between an old grid street and one near the working north side is the single loudest thing about this place.
Before you go
Three things to settle, because two of these seven are a long way from the other five
The mistakes here are geographic and financial rather than seasonal: driving up the wrong side of a mountain range, arriving at a gate without expecting a fee, and turning up at a venue that only opens for ticketed events.
Sort before you drive
- An advance ticket for the mine overlook, and the address on Bacchus Highway rather than a Magna one
- Whether the theater or the concert hall actually has a performance on the night you are free
- Cash or a card for a state park gate fee charged per vehicle rather than per person
- The launch ramp condition, if there is anything on a trailer behind you
- Which of the two similarly named parks you actually mean, because they are on opposite sides of town
Check on the day
- The operator's own page for the overlook, since access there has been suspended before
- Visitor center hours at the state park, which differ from the park's own opening
- Whether fire restrictions are in force if you were planning anything involving flame
- Splash pad hours at the county park, which run Friday afternoon and weekend middays
- That a specific independent business on the historic street is still trading
Turn up and it is fine
- The historic street, on any daylight hour, at no cost and with no booking
- Copper Park and its skate park, which are open ground with no gate on them
- The county's 62 acres on 7200 West, free at any hour the light allows
- The ranger talk on the visitor center deck in season, which takes no reservation once you are inside
Five of these seven answer to somebody other than Magna City, and that changes who you call. The overlook is Rio Tinto's, the state park is Utah State Parks', the regional park is Salt Lake County's, the concert hall is a private promoter's and the theater is a volunteer arts alliance's. Magna City itself answers for Copper Park and for the street. Even the city's own municipal work is delivered by a services district under the council's direction rather than by departments of its own, which is a genuinely unusual arrangement and the single most useful thing to understand about how this place operates.
What this list leaves out, and why
- The county recreation center on the east side, which has a gym, an indoor track, an outdoor pool and licensed childcare. It is a genuinely good facility, and it is a resident amenity rather than a reason to drive across a valley.
- The county library branch on 8950 West, which opened in 2011 and is a pleasant building on the edge of the historic district. Worth ten minutes if you are already walking the street; not worth a journey on its own.
- The industrial works on the north side. It is the reason the town exists and it is the dominant thing on the skyline, and it is a private operating site with nothing to visit. Looking at it from a road is not an activity.
- The lake as a subject: its condition, its level and what the wider valley is arguing about. That is a county page, not a Magna one, and this list takes only the state park at the end of Magna's own road.
- The paved summer road over the far south end of the range. That belongs to another city's pages, and it closes for snow in the cold months and has been shut by washouts before, so check its status rather than counting on it.