Moving here Riverton
What a city split by an expressway asks of a household
A southwest valley address, honestly
Riverton reads as one suburb and behaves like two, because Bangerter Highway runs down the middle of it and the ground either side was built decades apart. The east side is the original town grid with the oldest streets and larger lots; the west side is subdivisions built mostly since 2000. Add a road program that shut one of the main crossings for a year, a city with no train platform of its own, and a summer festival that takes over the central park, and you have the honest version of this address.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
A Riverton address sits in the southwest corner of the Salt Lake Valley, and the most useful thing to know about it is that Bangerter Highway splits the city into an older east side and a newer west side. The east side is the original town grid around 12600 South and Redwood Road, with the oldest streets and the larger lots; the west side is subdivisions built mostly since 2000, running out toward 2700 West and the Mountain View Corridor. Which side you buy on shapes an ordinary week here more than the name on the street sign, because the two halves are about four miles apart and the trip between them crosses a six lane expressway. Beyond the split, the city gives you an unusual amount of ordinary good infrastructure for its size, no train platform of its own, and a couple of predictable festival days each summer. Drive the crossing you would make daily, at your own hours, before you settle on a side.
The two sides
The older east side and the newer west side, in buyer terms
Riverton grew from a farm town on the east side of what is now Bangerter Highway, and it has been building west ever since. That history is still written in the housing. The east side holds the original grid around 12600 South and Redwood Road: a good share of the homes date from the 1970s through the 1990s, the lots run larger, the trees are mature, and a scattering of parcels are big enough to keep a horse, left over from the agricultural streets that came before the subdivisions. It is the settled half.
The west side is newer. Most of the subdivisions out toward 2700 West and the Mountain View Corridor were built since 2000, on tighter lots with sidewalks, two story homes and pocket parks, and the newest construction sits on the last open ground near the western edge. Neither half is the better address. They are two different kinds of home at two different ages, and the choice between them is really a choice about what you want at the end of your street.
The reason the choice matters is the line between them. Bangerter Highway runs north to south down the middle of the city, and the two halves are about four miles apart. The second thing worth knowing before anything else is that this city has no train platform of its own. There is no version of a Riverton address that walks to a train. The nearest light rail is a line terminus in the city immediately to the north, which makes a transit commute here a park and ride commute rather than a walk to a platform. The practical minutes and routes are on the Riverton city guide, which is where that arithmetic belongs.
The line down the middle
What each side of the expressway actually puts within walking distance
This is not a verdict. It is the practical difference between two halves of one city, stated as what each side puts at the end of a street.
| East of Bangerter | West of Bangerter | |
|---|---|---|
| Open ground at the end of the street | The Jordan River corridor, the flood plain and the county golf course, on a small number of streets | The newest neighborhood parks, the Rose Creek Trail and the twenty acre park with the sledding hill |
| The civic center of gravity | Riverton City Park, the rodeo arena and the Old Dome Meeting Hall, all on one site | The retail district on the corridor, which is where the evenings happen |
| Water in summer | The splash pad at the flagship park | The splash pad at Western Springs Park |
| The thing being built | Very little; this ground is settled | A canal trail, two proposed parks and the tail end of the road program |
| The road you will use most | 12600 South and Redwood Road | 13400 South and the corridor |
| What the festival does to you | The park becomes a festival venue for the run of Town Days and the fireworks crowd arrives on the Fourth | The parade takes 13400 South and 2700 West for an evening on the third |
This is a trade rather than a ranking. Neither column is the better address, and which one suits a household depends on where its week actually points. The way to settle it is to drive between the two halves at 5:30 on a weekday and see how the crossing feels, because that crossing is the whole of the difference.
The crossings are the part that decides how real the divide feels. Bangerter Highway is being rebuilt as a free flowing road without stoplights, which is excellent for anybody driving along it and means the ways across it are grade separated interchanges rather than junctions you can turn at. In practice a household on one side plans its crossings, and a household that has to make that crossing twice a day should be certain about it before signing anything.
The compensating advantage is real, and it is the reason people choose this city over the ones either side of it. Riverton is framed by two north to south expressways rather than one, with a major arterial on the eastern edge as well. When one of them is jammed or closed there is a genuine parallel alternative, which in this valley is a when rather than an if. That is a structural benefit of the position, and it does not depend on anything being finished.
The east side has one thing the west side cannot have at any price, which is the river. It touches a small number of streets, it is the only place in the city where a neighborhood reaches a regional trail without crossing an arterial, and the river page sets out exactly how few of them there are. The west side has the thing the east side cannot have, which is newness: the parks, the housing and the retail out there are two decades younger.
The road program
Years of closures, and most of it is now behind this city
Anybody who looked at Riverton between about 2021 and 2025 and did not like the traffic was looking at a city in the middle of rebuilding its main road. That work is a long way further along now, and separating what is finished from what is not is the single most useful thing a buyer can do here.
Start with what is delivered, because you can drive it today. The 12600 South freeway style interchange was built in an earlier Bangerter round and has been open for years. Then 13400 South reopened over Bangerter Highway on September 29, 2025, after being closed to east and west traffic since October 2024, with the new Bangerter lanes over 2700 West opening the same day. The result is that both of the city's principal east to west routes now cross the expressway without a stoplight.
The 13400 South closure is the one to understand, because it explains a lot of what people say about this city. That intersection was shut to east and west traffic for roughly a year, on a road that is one of the two main ways across the western half of Riverton, and every detour in that period ran through the other one. Anybody whose impression of driving here was formed in that window formed it under conditions that no longer apply.
What is not finished is the rest of the corridor further north. UDOT describes a finished state in which Bangerter runs free flowing and without stoplights from Interstate 15 to 4100 South, with about eight minutes of travel time saved once every interchange in the program is complete, and with work continuing at points north of the city. The discipline to apply is the one worth applying to any announced project. Price what is delivered and treat what is described as upside. The crossings at 12600 South and 13400 South are delivered; the free flowing corridor to the north and the eight minutes that come with it are neither promised to you nor finished, and buying on the strength of them is buying a drawing.
Take the current road position from UDOT directly, not from a listing. This is the most volatile fact about a Riverton address and it changes several times a year. Interchanges open, ramps shift, and closures land at short notice. Before you commit to a commute, drive it at your actual hours in both directions, and check UDOT's current project pages for anything under construction between your street and wherever you are going. Ten minutes of that is worth more than any table.
The transit reality
There is no walk to a platform here, at any price
Some cities in this valley let you buy a shorter commute by buying nearer a train station. Riverton does not offer that trade at all, because there is no rail platform inside the city. The nearest light rail is a line terminus in the city immediately to the north, and the nearest commuter rail is across the river on the eastern side of the valley.
The practical consequence is that a transit commute from a Riverton address is a park and ride commute. You drive to a station, you leave the car, and the car is part of the journey every day in both directions. That is a completely normal arrangement and plenty of people do it happily. It is also a different proposition from walking out the front door to a platform, and the distinction gets blurred constantly by listings that describe a property as being near light rail.
So the honest test is a specific one and it costs an afternoon. Drive from the property to the station you would actually use, at the hour you would actually go, and see what the parking lot is like when you get there. Then do the return leg at the hour you would come back. If the answer works, this city gives you a lot of other things in exchange. If it does not, no amount of proximity on a map will fix it.
The bus network is the other half of the picture, and it moves more people here than the rail does. Services have been added and revised in recent years, and any route list printed on a page goes stale quickly, so take the current lineup from the transit authority. The city guide carries the routes, the distances and the minutes as they stood when it was last updated.
In a lot of this valley you can buy a shorter commute by buying nearer a platform. Here you buy a shorter drive to somebody else's.
The festival days
What the festival does to the streets around it
Almost every city in this valley has a summer celebration. Riverton Town Days is unusual in how concentrated it is and in how much of the city it uses, and the two halves of the city feel it differently.
For the east side the effect is centered on one site. Riverton City Park and the rodeo arena beside it carry an arena sorting competition, several nights of rodeo, a car show, two evenings of carnival, a concert, a movie and a full day on the Fourth of July that finishes with fireworks after dark. Thousands of people arrive for that display, in a park with a residential grid immediately around it. For the streets nearest the park that is either the best evening of the year or a night to be elsewhere, and it is entirely predictable.
For the west side the effect is a single evening, and it is on the roads. The parade runs the evening of July 3, starting on 13400 South and turning north onto 2700 West, which means two of the west side's working streets are out of service in the early evening. Anybody who needs to cross the western half of the city that evening should assume it is not happening.
Neither of these is a reason to buy or not buy anywhere. They are fixed, annual and knowable, which puts them in a different category from a problem. What they are is a reason to know the dates before you tour a property in late June, because a street near the park on the Fourth of July is not the street you saw in April. The Town Days page has the full lineup and both routes.
The honest column
What is standing here, and what has only been proposed
A city that has grown as fast as this one for as long as this one accumulates plans, and plans are not amenities. Riverton is carrying several right now: two new parks in early planning on the west side, a canal trail with a funded northern section that is moving into construction, and the remainder of a road program that is genuinely most of the way through but not finished.
All three are real and none of them is standing yet. The Welby Jacob Canal Trail is the furthest along; its northern section runs about three quarters of a mile, from 13200 South to 13800 South, with a bridge planned over 13400 South. The two parks are earlier still, described in planning at roughly ten acres near a canal south of 13400 South and roughly sixteen acres at Old Liberty Way and Majestic Rise Parkway. A proposed park has no opening date, and the honest position for a buyer is that a park near a specific street either exists or it does not.
What is delivered is a good deal, and it is worth listing in its own right rather than being treated as the boring column. Thirty three parks and more than 540 acres of open space. A 31 acre flagship park with an arena, a skate park, pickleball courts and a hall at the gate. Twenty acres on the west side with a splash pad and a sledding hill. Two river trailheads and a county golf course. A retail district on the western boundary. Two grade separated crossings of the expressway. That is what a household actually gets on the day it moves in, and the ranked list covers the visitable half of it.
Growth in a city like this arrives as infill and as new subdivisions on the last open ground. Riverton has been building west for decades, and the western edge is where the remaining ground is. That means new construction here goes up next to homes that are only a few years old, on what was recently the edge. If you are buying on the current western front, look at what is zoned and proposed on the ground beyond your street rather than at what is there today, because the view from the back of a house on an edge is the most temporary thing about it.
The honest limit
Everything spectacular is somebody else's, and it is a drive
Riverton has no mountain, no canyon mouth, no lake shore and no bench, and this corner of the county is about as far from all four as the valley floor gets. The ski roads are diagonally across the metro. The lake is on the opposite side. The foothill trails begin in the city to the west, and the bench route runs along a range this city cannot see the bottom of. Every one of those is reachable from here on the same terms as from several hundred thousand other addresses, which is to say by car and with the morning committed.
The useful way to hold that is as a filter rather than a defect. If the picture in your head is a front door that opens onto open ground, this is not the corner of the valley that delivers it, and no amount of proximity argument will change that. If the picture is a settled grid with a great deal of ordinary infrastructure inside it and a serious drive when you want something spectacular, this city matches it precisely.
Four county pages carry the borrowed half properly, and reading them beats any summary a city page could offer. The Cottonwood canyons sets out the four resorts and two watersheds. Canyon winter access is the one to read before your first February attempt, because those roads have rules about tires and parking. The Oquirrh side covers the range on the western horizon. And the valley in winter covers the season every address on this floor shares.
And on the comparison question, which anybody weighing the southwest valley will have: those belong on their own pages rather than inside a lifestyle guide. The compare section carries the data driven head to heads across this county and the rest of the state, and nothing on this page tries to re-argue one.
Buy the edge of the valley for the view, or buy the southwest corner of it and drive properly when it matters.
The last word
Who should choose this address on purpose
This address rewards a household that drives, that wants two parallel routes north rather than one, and that values having a large amount of ordinary good stuff close by: parks in quantity, water in summer, a serious municipal park with an arena in it, a retail district for the evenings and a quiet river edge that hardly anybody uses. It rewards anybody who will use a park at the end of a street rather than admire one in a listing.
It frustrates anybody who assumed a train. It frustrates anybody who did not realize which side of an expressway they were buying on until the second week. And it will frustrate anybody who priced a proposed park or an unfinished road as though it were already there, because two of those are genuinely in the pipeline here and neither has a date you can rely on.
Four checks settle it, and all of them are free. Cross the city at the hour your life actually happens. Stand on the street on a weekday morning and again on a Saturday evening. Work out which train platform you would genuinely use and drive to it once. And walk to the nearest park and the nearest trail on foot rather than measuring them on a map, because in this city the difference between two streets a few hundred yards apart is whether either of those is reachable without crossing an arterial. The city guide has the numbers behind all four.
Scott Buehler
Moving Utah About Scott
Keep reading
More of Riverton on The Local
Things to do
The top 7, ranked
A park with a rodeo arena in it, a river on the far edge, and a pond open every day in season.
Read the guideThe park
Riverton City Park and the Dome
Thirty one acres, a domed hall rebuilt in 2015, a skate park, a splash pad and an arena.
Read the guideTown Days
Riverton Town Days, in order
A rodeo in June, an evening parade on July 3, fireworks on the Fourth, three separate sites.
Read the guideThe river
The Jordan River through Riverton
Two trailheads, a county golf course, and a city named for a river it grew away from.
Read the guideThe west side
Western Springs Park
Twenty acres the county handed over in 2017, with a splash pad and a sledding hill.
Read the guideThe companion
Riverton, the whole picture
The park, the festival, the river edge, the west side and the address, in one place.
Read the pageQuick answers
Moving here, answered
Convenient and car shaped. The city is framed by two north to south expressways with a major arterial on its eastern edge, which means there is nearly always a parallel route when one of them is jammed. It also has an unusual amount of ordinary good infrastructure for its size: 33 parks across more than 540 acres, a 31 acre flagship park with a rodeo arena in it, three splash pads (Old Farm's was closed in 2026), a river edge and a retail district. What it does not have is a train platform of its own.
Neither is better; they are different. The east side is the original town grid, with the oldest streets, larger lots and the Jordan River corridor, the flagship park, the rodeo arena and the county golf course. The west side is subdivisions built mostly since 2000, with the retail district, the newest parks and most of the remaining construction. The two halves are about four miles apart and the trip between them crosses a six lane expressway with no stoplight where the two main east to west routes meet it, so a household making that crossing daily should drive it before committing.
The Riverton part is largely behind the city. The 12600 South freeway style interchange was built in an earlier round, and 13400 South reopened over Bangerter Highway on September 29, 2025, after being closed to east and west traffic since October 2024, with new Bangerter lanes over 2700 West opening the same day. The wider program continues further north, and UDOT describes a finished state with no stoplights from Interstate 15 to 4100 South and about eight minutes saved.
No. There is no rail platform inside the city boundary, so a transit commute from a Riverton address is a park and ride commute rather than a walk to a platform. The nearest light rail is a line terminus in the city immediately to the north, and the nearest commuter rail is across the river on the eastern side of the valley. Drive to whichever one you would use, at your own hours, and look at the parking lot before you decide it works.
Two things, and both are structural rather than fixable. The first is that nothing spectacular is inside the boundary, so the canyons, the lake and the bench trails are all a proper drive and shared with the whole county. The second is that the city is split by an expressway, which makes the crossings a daily fact of life for a good number of households. Neither is a criticism of the place; both are consequences of where it is and how it grew.
For two evenings a year, noticeably. The parade runs the evening of July 3 along 13400 South and then north on 2700 West, which puts two of the west side's working roads out of service in the early evening. The following night, fireworks over the west lawn of Riverton City Park draw thousands of people into the residential grid around it. Both are fixed annual events rather than surprises, which is exactly why they are worth knowing about in advance.
Some are funded and some are only in planning, and the distinction matters. Funded and moving: the Welby Jacob Canal Trail, whose northern section runs about three quarters of a mile from 13200 South to 13800 South, with a bridge planned over 13400 South. In early planning only: about ten acres near the canal south of 13400 South and about sixteen acres at Old Liberty Way and Majestic Rise Parkway. A proposed park has no opening date.
Almost certainly. A head to head deserves data rather than an argument buried in prose, so those questions belong on dedicated comparison pages. Start in the compare section for the city pairings that are live. What this page handles is the thing no table can, which is what an address in a city divided by an expressway feels like on an ordinary weekday morning.
Four things, all free. Drive the crossing of Bangerter Highway you would make daily, at your own hours, in both directions. Stand on the street at 7:30 on a weekday morning and again on a Saturday evening in July. Work out which train platform outside this city you would genuinely use and go and look at its parking lot. And walk to the nearest park and the nearest trail rather than measuring them on a map, because whether you cross a main road to get there is the whole question.
One city, two halves. Buy the side, not just the ZIP code
Two houses in this city can look identical in a listing and give a household completely different weeks, because one of them walks to a park and the other starts every trip with a grade separated crossing of a six lane road. That is not something a portal records anywhere. Send me the streets you are weighing, and a Salt Lake County partner agent who knows this grid does the ground work, while I keep the homework and the financing side.
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