City Murray, Salt Lake County
The city at the exact center of the Salt Lake Valley
Murray, and what a city builds when it borders no mountain
Nothing in Murray sits at the end of a canyon road. There is no lake, no ski gate and no trailhead into the range, because the city sits at the geometric center of the Salt Lake Valley and every edge of it belongs to another town. So Murray built its own: a 63 acre park on a mountain creek, five miles of river trail, a theater restored to its 1938 self, and a hospital campus on the ground where two smelter smokestacks were the valley's landmark for eighty years.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
Murray is the city at the exact center of the Salt Lake Valley, and it is the one valley suburb that runs almost everything itself: its own city government, its own power company and its own school district. Nothing scenic sits inside its boundary, so what it is known for is what it built and what it kept. Murray Park spreads 63 acres along a mountain creek, five miles of the Jordan River trail run its western edge, a 1938 theater reopened in 2025 after eight years dark, and Intermountain Medical Center, the valley's largest hospital campus, stands on the ground where two smelter smokestacks were the local landmark for eighty years. This page is the map to six deeper ones, with the borrowed canyons, lake and trails written once at the county level.
The shape of it
A city with no edge of its own, because every edge belongs to another town
Murray occupies the geometric center of the Salt Lake Valley and it is entirely surrounded by other cities. There is no canyon at the end of one of its streets, no lake at the end of its road and no mountain inside its boundary. Everything scenic that a visitor associates with this valley is twenty to thirty five minutes away in some direction, and Murray is the place all of those directions are measured from.
What the city has instead is a set of things it built. A 63 acre park with a mountain creek running the length of it. Five miles of paved river trail on the western edge, with five separate trailheads on it. A 1938 cinema that sat dark for eight years and reopened in 2025 as a 333 seat theater. An 1899 mansion that became the city museum in the same year. And a hundred acres of former smelter ground carrying the valley's largest hospital campus, where two smokestacks stood for eighty years.
That last item is the thing people who grew up here still navigate by, and it is gone. Both stacks came down on one morning in August 2000. What replaced them is worth a page of its own, and so is what now marks the ground: a sculpture at a rail platform, a mural on a street corner, and a garden laid out inside the footprint of the taller stack. The smelter ground page tells that story in full.
Murray is the place all of the valley's directions are measured from, so it built its own reasons to stay.
What is actually here
Four places, and who actually runs each
Murray is unusual for a valley suburb because most of what a resident uses here is run by the city itself. That is the durable difference between Murray and the towns around it, and it decides who to call when you have a question. Two of the best known places inside the city, though, are not the city's at all.
The city runs Murray Park, its amphitheater and The Park Center, so pavilion bookings, session times and the summer season all go through the Murray parks office. It also runs the restored Murray Theater and the Murray Museum. Both are civic projects rather than commercial venues, and both reopened within five months of each other in 2025.
The exceptions are worth knowing before you plan around them. Wheeler Historic Farm has a Murray address but is a Salt Lake County park, so the county sets its calendar and its events. Intermountain Medical Center is private, run by Intermountain Health on the hundred acre site the city rezoned after the federal cleanup, and it is the single largest thing inside the city line. The Jordan River Parkway is shared: Murray maintains its own five miles, and the trail on either side belongs to neighboring cities and the regional river commission.
Two of the city's headline buildings reopened in 2025, five months apart. The Murray Museum returned on 2 May 2025 in the restored John P. Cahoon Mansion on Poplar Street, and the Murray Theater reopened on 26 September 2025 after eight years dark. A lot of older guidance still lists both as closed, so it is worth checking the current schedule before you build an evening around either.
The rhythm
A civic calendar rather than a seasonal one
Most cities in this valley have a season that defines them, because they sit at the mouth of something. Murray sits at the mouth of nothing, so its year is organized around a program rather than around snow or heat. That program is denser than a city of this size has any business running, and it is almost all municipal.
Summer is the loudest part of it. The amphitheater at the south end of Murray Park carries a ticketed season from early June into September, with the Murray Symphony, the Murray Concert Band, staged musicals and tribute concerts across the run. The outdoor pool opens for the school break. And on 4 July the whole city gathers in the park for Fun Days, a July Fourth celebration that has run for decades and starts before seven in the morning. The park page takes the season in full.
Fall and winter move indoors and, since September 2025, they move to the theater. Eight years of silence on that building ended with a reopening concert, and a city that had been sending its evenings to downtown Salt Lake or to Fashion Place got a 333 seat room back. Add Desert Star on State Street, which has staged its own parody melodramas since 1989, and the winter evening arithmetic works without leaving the city. The city center page covers the restoration and the zoning behind it.
The one thing that runs in every month is the river. Murray keeps about five miles of the Jordan River Parkway inside its own boundary, paved and flat with mile markers every tenth of a mile, and it is the closest this city gets to having its own outdoors. It also has something no other stretch of that trail has, which is a school district running an outdoor classroom in the wetland beside it. The river page has all of it.
A city at the center of a valley has to build its own reasons to stay in on a Saturday.
The wider valley
Everything within half an hour belongs to eighteen cities, not to this one
Murray's pitch has always been proximity, and proximity is the one thing a city cannot own. The canyons, the river, the county's shared outings and the valley in winter each sit a short drive away in some direction. Here is where each one is.
The long line
The Jordan River Parkway
Forty five miles of paved trail, eight cities on one riverbank, and a water trail with mandatory portages.
Read the guide
The canyons
The Cottonwood canyons
Four resorts on two roads that both end in snow, and the watershed rules that come with them.
Read the guide
Days out
Weekends in the valley
Eight outings across the county ordered by price, including the farm with a Murray address.
Read the guide
The season
The valley in winter
What the inversion actually is, how residents read a forecast, and what the season asks of you.
Read the guideNothing scenic begins inside Murray's boundary, which is why the deeper pages here stay close to home: a park, a river reach, the smelter ground and the city center. The canyons, the lake and the shared outings belong to the whole valley, and each is written once on the county pages above rather than retold on every city page.
If you only have one day
One version of a good day in Murray
Early
Start on the river before the heat
Five miles of flat paved trail with mile markers every tenth of a mile, and five separate car parks to start from depending on which end you want.
The river page
Late morning
Walk the length of Murray Park
Sixty three acres with a mountain creek through the middle, an arboretum, five pavilions and the ground that used to hold the county fair.
The park page
Afternoon
Stand in the footprint of the tall stack
A memorial garden laid out where a 455 foot chimney stood until 2000, on the hospital campus that replaced the smelter that built it.
The smelter ground
Evening
Take a seat in a room restored to 1938
The Murray Theater came back in September 2025 after eight years dark, with 333 seats and a stage that needed 17 feet of excavation under it.
The center pageThe Murray companion
Six more pages, and none of them is about a canyon
The deeper pages on the city itself: the ranked list of what is genuinely here, the 63 acre park and its season, the smelter ground and the two stacks that stood on it, the city center rebuild and the two buildings that reopened in 2025, Murray's own five miles of the Jordan River, and what a center of the valley address asks of a household.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Quick answers
Murray, answered
At the geographic middle of the Salt Lake Valley, about ten to twelve miles south of downtown Salt Lake City and completely surrounded by other cities: Millcreek to the north, Holladay to the east, Midvale to the south, and Taylorsville and West Jordan across the Jordan River to the west. Interstate 15 runs along its western flank and the Interstate 215 belt loop passes a few minutes to the east, which is the whole reason the city describes itself as the hub of the county.
Historically, for smelting. Works operated on this ground from about 1870 and ASARCO ran a lead smelter at 5200 South State from 1902 until roughly 1949, leaving two smokestacks of 455 and 295 feet that were the valley's landmark for eighty years. Both were demolished on 6 August 2000 and Intermountain Medical Center now stands on that ground. Today the city is better known for Murray Park, its own school district and power company, and three rail stations inside the city line.
No. Voters rejected a 3.4 million dollar bond to preserve them in 1998 and both stacks were dropped by explosive charges on the morning of 6 August 2000. Three works now mark them: a sculpture at Murray Central TRAX station, a mural at State Street and 5300 South, and a memorial garden laid out in the footprint of the tall stack on the hospital campus. The stacks also survive in the City of Murray's own logo, which is the version most residents see daily.
It is listed at 63.4 acres, which makes it the centerpiece of the city's park system, and Little Cottonwood Creek runs the length of it. Inside the boundary are an amphitheater, an outdoor aquatic center, The Park Center recreation complex with indoor pools, an arboretum, five rentable pavilions, playgrounds and a set of ball fields. Part of the ground previously carried the Salt Lake County Fairgrounds before newer facilities were built in South Jordan.
Yes. It reopened on 26 September 2025 with a concert headlined by Loren Allred, and to the public on 28 September, after eight years dark and a restoration of more than 3 million dollars. The 333 seat room was returned to its 1938 appearance and fitted with laser projection, new sound and production systems and an orchestra pit on an elevator lift. The schedule slipped from an original target of early 2024 because crews found foundation failure under the stage.
Around five miles, along the whole western edge of the city, and Murray is unusually exact about them. Winchester Street at 6400 South marks the southern end of the municipal reach and 4800 South the northern one, and the trail is measured with markers every tenth of a mile the whole way. Five parks give onto it, Germania, Willow Pond, Arrowhead, Walden and Winchester, so an out and back can be any length you like. The city describes the surface as fully accessible with barrier free areas.
It has a Murray address at 6351 South 900 East, but it is a Salt Lake County park rather than a city one. That distinction is the useful part: the county sets the calendar, the fees and the events, so a Murray city number will not answer a question about it. The farmstead is one of the county's shared outings and among the few of its kind in the valley to survive intact.
It became a zoning ordinance. Murray's 2017 general plan called for a redesign of the core, and the decisive step arrived on 25 June 2025 when the Municipal Council adopted the City Center Form Based Code. That broke the old single downtown zone into five separate form districts, each with its own purpose, and set up a five member architectural review committee to vet new construction before the Planning Commission sees it. The densest of the five districts sits nearest Murray Central station. What has not arrived yet is the buildings.
For a visitor, comfortably, because everything here is within a few minutes of everything else and there is no drive up a canyon to budget for. A morning on the river trail, a walk through Murray Park, an afternoon on the old smelter ground and an evening at the theater or at Desert Star fills a day without repetition. What one day cannot do is the summer program, because the amphitheater season and Fun Days on 4 July are fixed dates rather than things you can turn up for.
Thinking about Murray? Start with what the middle of a valley is worth
An address here is bought for minutes rather than for views: three rail stations, two freeway flanks, a hospital campus inside the boundary and nowhere in the county much past half an hour. What it is lived with is through traffic on the arterials and the fact that everything scenic is borrowed. Tell me what you are weighing and I will put you with a Salt Lake County partner agent who works the mid valley, and stay on the file for the homework and the financing side.
Or call Scott: (435) 357-4345or send Scott a message
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Eight more doors into Murray, chosen for what this page covers.
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