The river Midvale
The western boundary, and the ground that had to be rebuilt beside it
The Jordan River through Midvale, honestly.
The river draws the whole western boundary of this city and the paved regional trail follows it. What makes Midvale's stretch unlike any other municipal reach in the valley is that stabilising these banks appears by name in a federal cleanup remedy, and the districts built above them were laid out facing the water rather than backing onto it. Here are the three ways onto it, the wetland park most people miss, and what is underneath the ground beside the tarmac.
Southern Utah is my home turf. Midvale is not, so these pages are researched rather than lived: checked against city, county and venue sources, and dated so you can see how fresh they are. For the on-the-ground work here I lean on a Salt Lake County partner agent.
Start here
The one reach where the remedy included the river bank.
The Jordan River draws Midvale's entire western boundary. That is the whole of this city's relationship with it: not a river through the middle of town, but a line on the far side, with the paved regional trail following it and a redeveloped third of the city sitting between the trail and the freeway.
What makes this reach different from every other municipal stretch in the valley is what is underneath the ground beside it. The published remedy for the Midvale Slag site includes stabilisation of the Jordan River banks. That is not landscaping described after the fact; it is a line in a federal cleanup record. The bank you walk along here was part of the engineering.
The second difference follows from the first. Because the ground had to be rebuilt anyway, the districts that went on it were laid out facing the water rather than backing onto it, which is the opposite of what an industrial river edge normally produces. The wetland park, the trail connections and the buildings above them are all deliberate. Very few reaches of this river were designed at all.
Midvale's river edge by the numbers
20 acres
of wetland and open water at Riverwalk Park
2
cleanup records on the ground the trail passes
Dark
the published closing time at the trail park
11pm
when a widely used trail listing says the section closes
The access
Three ways onto it, and they are not the same trip.
Choosing badly here does not ruin a morning, but it does decide whether you get restrooms, whether you get wetland, and how long the light lasts. All three are within a short distance of each other on the western edge of the city.
| Jordan Bluffs Park | Riverwalk Park Open Space | The 7800 South trailhead | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where | 7970 Bingham Junction Boulevard | 1013 Village Bend Lane | 1071 West 7800 South |
| What it is | A city park with the published trail connections on it | About 20 acres of wetland with an open water pond and walking paths | A trailhead onto the parkway |
| What is there | Basketball, pickleball and volleyball courts, a playground and small pavilions | Paths linking the parkway to the district and the rail platform | Trail access and parking |
| Restrooms | None published | None published | None published |
| Closing | Published as closing at dark | Open space rather than a scheduled park | Trail hours |
| Use it for | Courts first and the trail second | The wetland, the birds and the walk to the platform | Getting straight onto tarmac and riding |
Addresses and amenities as published by the City of Midvale and by the site listings for the open space and trailhead, checked 8 August 2026. Restroom provision across Midvale's parks is published as seasonal where it exists at all, and none of these three sites publishes restrooms, so plan accordingly. Confirm anything you are relying on with Midvale Parks on 801-567-7235.
Riverwalk is the one worth a detour and it is the one nobody arrives for. Twenty acres of wetland with a pond in it, sitting between a regional trail and a redevelopment district, with paths that carry you from the water to a light rail platform on foot. That sequence, from a bird hide sort of landscape to a train, inside ten minutes and at no cost, does not exist on most of this river.
Jordan Bluffs Park is the practical choice for anybody who wants to combine the trail with something else, because three court sports sit on one small site there. Its two published constraints are worth taking seriously though: no restrooms, and a closing time of dark rather than the ten o'clock the city's other parks keep. In December that is an afternoon that ends around five.
The 7800 South trailhead is the plain one and it does the plain job. If the point is to be on the tarmac and moving, it is the shortest route from a car to the trail on this side of the city. A widely used trail listing puts the Midvale section at about 2.6 miles and records it as open year round with an eleven o'clock close, though that is a trail listing rather than a city or county publication, so treat it as a guide rather than an ordinance.
Underneath
The bank you walk on is named in a federal remedy.
Two Superfund sites sit against this stretch of river and both are on the public record. The northern one, Midvale Slag, covers 446 acres where five smelters ran between 1871 and 1958, and its published remedy lists soil excavation and removal, smelter waste and slag removal, groundwater monitoring, stabilisation of the Jordan River banks, and institutional controls. It was deleted from the National Priorities List in 2015.
The southern one is Sharon Steel, also recorded as Midvale Tailings, about 470 acres, where ore milling and smelting ran from 1906 to 1971 and where the first operable unit was roughly 260 undeveloped acres carrying a tailings pile recorded at 10 million cubic yards. The Environmental Protection Agency and the state cleaned it by 1999 and the deletion took effect on 24 September 2004.
Neither of those is a reason to be nervous on a trail and neither is a reason to be casual about a parcel. They are two separate files with two separate sets of dates, they are public, and the honest way to hold them is the way a title officer does: read the documents that attach to the specific ground in question. The district page sets the whole record out side by side, including which redevelopment sits on which site.
What all of that produced, for a walker, is a river edge that was designed rather than left over. The wetland park with the pond in it, the paths that link the trail to a rail platform, the buildings above the bank that face towards the water: those are the consequences of a corridor that had to be rebuilt from the ground up. Most urban rivers get whatever was left after the industry moved out. This one got a plan.
Most city river banks are whatever survived the last century. This one is listed in the remedy that cleaned it.
The honest version
A short reach with no destination on it.
Nothing on Midvale's stretch is a reason to drive across the valley. There is no historic mill, no garden, no visitor centre, no cafe on the bank and no landmark. If you are choosing one segment of this river for a day out, it is not this one, and saying otherwise would waste somebody's Saturday.
What it is instead is a short, flat, useful edge with an unusual amount of design behind it, and its best feature is connection rather than scenery. From the bank you can walk to a wetland, a district, a supermarket and a light rail platform without crossing anything difficult. On a river where large stretches run behind fences and service roads, that is worth more than another mile of tarmac.
For anybody weighing an address, the practical point is short. The western third of this city is the part with the trail at the end of the street, and it is also the newest part, the part with the rail platform in it, and the part with the two files behind it. Those things arrive together here; they are not separable. Whether that trade suits a household is a question worth answering on foot rather than from a listing.
Beyond the boundary in either direction this stops being Midvale's subject. How far the line runs, where it joins up and where it does not, what paddling it involves, and what kind of river it actually is after a century of industry are county questions with a county answer: the parkway page holds all of it, and this page deliberately does not.
A snowmelt spring is the one thing that changes this edge from week to week. Everything on Midvale's western boundary sits low against a river fed by a very large catchment, and a big melt year shows in it. The water rises, the margins move, and paved sections can go out of use for water or for repair with little notice. Closures are posted rather than signposted on the ground, so from late February through May the ten seconds spent checking before you leave the house is worth more than any of the planning above it.
How to use it well
Four habits for a reach that is a connection rather than a destination.
Pick the entrance for the trip rather than for the distance. Riverwalk for the wetland and the walk to the platform, Jordan Bluffs Park if courts are part of the day, the 7800 South trailhead if the point is to be moving. That single choice does more for a morning here than any route planning, because all three put you on the same tarmac and only one of them puts you beside a pond.
Watch the light in winter. The park carrying the city's published trail connections closes at dark rather than at ten, which in December is a very different instruction from the one it gives in June. Add no published restrooms at any of the three access points and the sensible shape of a cold weather visit is short and daylight bound.
Treat it as one segment of something longer. The trail continues into the cities either side and the system as a whole, with its length and its connections, is the region page's subject rather than this one's. And if the district above the bank is the thing you are actually curious about, the Bingham Junction page takes the record, the buildings and the two separate files properly.
Keep reading
More of Midvale on The Local.
Things to do
The top 7, ranked
A mural street, a disc golf course, a museum open three afternoons, and a driving range.
Read the guideMain Street
Midvale Main, the arts district
Fifty murals, an art house, a food truck plaza and a street that lost its traffic to I-15.
Read the guideThe park
Midvale City Park and the museum
An amphitheatre, a disc golf course, a splash pad and a museum on the northeast corner.
Read the guideBingham Junction
Bingham Junction, on cleaned ground
Four hundred and forty six acres off the federal cleanup list, and what stands there now.
Read the guideMoving here
A small city in the middle
Five point eight square miles, three railway platforms, and what small area actually buys.
Read the guideThe companion
Midvale, the whole picture
Main Street, the park, the reclaimed ground, the river edge and the address, in one place.
Read the pageQuick answers
The edge, answered.
Three places on the western edge of the city. Jordan Bluffs Park at 7970 Bingham Junction Boulevard carries the city's published trail connections along with basketball, pickleball and volleyball courts, a playground and small pavilions. Riverwalk Park Open Space at 1013 Village Bend Lane is about 20 acres of wetland with an open water pond and paths linking the trail to the district and the rail platform. The 7800 South trailhead is at 1071 West 7800 South.
Riverwalk Park Open Space, and it is the one almost nobody arrives for. About 20 acres of wetland with an open water pond, sitting between the regional trail and the redevelopment district, with walking paths that carry you from the water to a light rail platform on foot. That sequence, from wetland to train inside about ten minutes and at no cost, does not exist on most stretches of this river.
Because it was part of the engineering. The published remedy for the Midvale Slag site, which covers 446 acres of former smelter ground on this western edge, lists soil excavation and removal, smelter waste and slag removal, groundwater monitoring, stabilisation of the Jordan River banks, and institutional controls. That site was deleted from the National Priorities List in 2015. The separate Sharon Steel site to the south was cleaned by 1999 and deleted with effect from 24 September 2004.
No. The city publishes no restrooms at Jordan Bluffs Park, and it also publishes the park as closing at dark rather than at the ten o'clock its other parks keep. Neither of the other two river access points publishes restrooms either. Where restrooms do exist in Midvale's parks the city describes them as seasonal, so a cold weather visit to this edge is best planned as short and within daylight.
A widely used trail listing puts the Midvale section at about 2.6 miles and records it as open year round and closing at eleven at night. That is a trail listing rather than a city or county publication, so treat it as a guide rather than a rule. The wider trail is a county system that runs well beyond this boundary in both directions, and the region page reads it as a single line rather than city by city.
Less than the stretches with something attached to them. There is no historic mill, garden, visitor centre or cafe on this reach, so it is not the segment people drive across the valley for. What it has instead is connection: from the bank you can reach a wetland, a district, a supermarket and a light rail platform without crossing anything difficult, which on a river where long stretches run behind fences is worth more than another mile of tarmac.
Yes, and on this edge more than most, because the corridor here sits low against a river draining a very large catchment. A big snowmelt year raises the water, alters what the ground beside it looks like from week to week, and can put paved sections out of use for repair or simply for water. Closures are posted by the authorities that maintain the trail, so the sensible habit through March, April and May is to look before you set off rather than to turn round at a barrier.
A site of about 20 acres at 1013 Village Bend Lane, comprising a wetland area with an open water pond, with walking trails throughout that connect the Jordan River Parkway to the mixed use development and the TRAX station at Bingham Junction. It is open space rather than a scheduled park with a published closing time, and it is the quietest and least visited part of Midvale's western edge.
The western third of the city is the part with the trail at the end of the street. It is also the newest part, the part with a rail platform in it, and the part with two federal cleanup files behind it, and those things arrive together rather than separately. Whether that trade suits a household is worth answering on foot at the hour you would really use the trail, rather than from a listing photograph.
A designed river edge on the newest ground in the city.
On this side of the city two things arrive in the same purchase: the newest ground and the longest paper trail. Weighing one against the other is a records job, not a matter of taste. Tell me which parcels you are looking at and a Salt Lake County partner agent who works this western edge will pull the file on each, while I take the homework and the financing side.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.