See a show at Hale Centre Theatre
9900 South Monroe Street · Ticketed · Year round
Hale Centre Theatre moved to Sandy and opened the Mountain America Performing Arts Centre in November 2017, and the reason it belongs at the top of a list about this city is that nothing else here is a statewide draw in the same way. The building holds two stages. The Young Living Centre Stage seats 911 in the round on a rotating stage, and the Sorenson Legacy Jewel Box Stage seats 467 in a proscenium thrust arrangement for smaller work.
A theatre in the round with a stage that turns changes what a musical can do, and it is the thing people talk about on the way out. It also changes how you should buy seats, because there is no bad direction to face but there is a difference between the front row of one arc and the back of another. Parking is attached and free, which for a venue of this size is unusual enough to be worth stating.
The two stages want different decisions from you
The main stage takes the large musicals and it is the one that sells out first, often months ahead. The Jewel Box takes plays and smaller pieces and it is where a last minute seat is more likely to exist. If a specific title is the point of the trip, book early. If an evening at a theatre is the point, look at the Jewel Box schedule as well, because the two stages run different calendars in the same building.
It is a five minute drive from three other venues
This is the part visitors miss. Hale Centre Theatre, America First Field, the Mountain America Exposition Center and the Utah Mammoth Ice Center all sit within about a mile and a half of one another on the west side of the city. On a night when a match and a show finish together, the State Street corridor moves accordingly. Check whether anything else is on at the same hour before you decide how much time to leave.
The details
Getting there
Off State Street near 9900 South onto Monroe Street. Parking is attached to the building and free, and the Sandy Civic Center station is a short distance north for anyone arriving on the Blue Line.
Before you go
- Book early for the main stage. Popular titles go months ahead.
- Look at the Jewel Box schedule too, which runs separately in the same building.
- Check what else is on nearby that night, because four venues share this corridor.
- Parking is free and attached, so allow arrival time rather than parking time.
- Confirm the current season and running dates with the theatre before travelling.
Walk into Dimple Dell from the Wrangler trailhead
10350 South 1300 East · Free · Year round
Dimple Dell Regional Park is 630 acres of ravine running east to west across the middle of Sandy, with more than 15 miles of unpaved trail for walkers, cyclists and horse riders. Streets cross over it rather than through it, which means the city is above you and out of sight for most of a walk, and that is a genuinely strange sensation in the middle of a valley suburb of nearly a hundred thousand people.
The Wrangler trailhead at 10350 South 1300 East is the one to start from. It has parking, restrooms, picnic tables and drinking water, which is more than the other two offer, and it puts you close to the tunnel under 1300 East that links the two halves of the park. The Dimple Dell page has all three trailheads, the tunnel, Dry Creek and the reason none of it is paved.
It is open space rather than a park, and that is on purpose
There is no lighting, no pavement in the bottom and no playground down there. Salt Lake County proposed paving about three miles of the North Rim Trail in 2017 and dropped the plan after a public campaign, spending the parks bond money on restrooms, trailheads and signage instead. What that leaves is a large natural area with dirt underfoot, which is exactly what its users asked for and not what a first time visitor always expects.
Horses have the right of way and it is not a formality
This is one of the few places in the valley where an equestrian trail network is the primary use rather than an afterthought, and the tunnel under 1300 East was built 14 feet wide and 14 feet high for that reason. Cyclists and walkers yield to horses, and on a blind corner in a narrow gulch that matters. If you ride a bike here, ride it expecting to stop.
The details
Getting there
The Wrangler trailhead sits on the west side of 1300 East at about 10350 South, with parking, restrooms and water on site. Two further trailheads, Dimple Dell Road and Mount Jordan, serve the eastern half of the park.
Before you go
- Nothing is paved in the bottom and nothing is lit. Bring a torch if you are out late.
- Yield to horses. This is a working equestrian trail network, not a paved path.
- Spring thaw turns the bottom to mud, which damages trail. Wait a few dry days.
- The rim trails are shadeless. Midsummer afternoons are the wrong time.
- Dogs are allowed here under Salt Lake County park rules, unlike Bells Canyon.
Climb to the lower falls in Bells Canyon
Bell Canyon Preservation Trailhead · Free · Late spring to autumn
Bells Canyon is the drainage on Sandy's southeast edge, and every one of its trailheads is inside this city. The newest and largest is the Bell Canyon Preservation Trailhead, off Wasatch Boulevard just south of Little Cottonwood Canyon Road, which Sandy City opened on 26 May 2022 with 133 stalls, year round restrooms, a drinking fountain, an asphalt loop for all abilities, dark sky friendly lighting and an emergency helicopter landing pad.
From there the published round trip to the lower falls is about 4.5 miles, climbing from roughly 5,310 feet to about 6,732. The upper falls is nearer 5.9 miles and the reservoir higher still, at around 9.5 miles round trip and 9,381 feet, which is a serious day rather than an afternoon. The trail crosses into designated wilderness partway up, and the whole canyon is protected watershed, so dogs are prohibited outright.
There are three trailheads and they are not equivalent
Preservation is the big one and the one with facilities. Boulders is the smallest, about seven tenths of a mile past the Little Cottonwood junction on Wasatch Boulevard. Granite is a compact lot roughly 500 feet up Little Cottonwood Canyon Road, which starts you higher and skips some of the opening climb. Published mileages for the same waterfall differ by close to a mile depending on which of the three the writer used, which is the usual source of confusion here.
The dog ban is a water rule and it is enforced
Bell Canyon feeds the Little Cottonwood Water Treatment Plant along with Little Cottonwood Creek, which makes this canyon part of the valley's drinking supply rather than an ordinary foothill trail. That is why dogs are prohibited, why swimming is prohibited, and why the rule is the same one that keeps dogs out of both Cottonwood canyons. Bring the dog to Dimple Dell instead and the whole problem disappears.
The details
Getting there
Take the first left after the traffic signal south of Little Cottonwood Canyon Road on Wasatch Boulevard. The lot holds 133 vehicles and has restrooms open year round, which the smaller trailheads do not.
Before you go
- No dogs, at any of the three trailheads. It is protected watershed.
- Published distances differ by about a mile between trailheads. Check which one a guide used.
- The reservoir and upper falls are a long day with several thousand feet of climbing.
- The all abilities asphalt loop at the trailhead is a genuine short option in its own right.
- For an easier walk on the same road, the Temple Quarry trail at the canyon mouth is a quarter mile and paved.
Watch Real Salt Lake or the Utah Royals
America First Field · Ticketed · Roughly February to October
America First Field at 9256 South State Street opened on 9 October 2008 as Rio Tinto Stadium and took its current name in September 2022. It seats 20,213 for football and expands past 25,000 for concerts, and it is the only major league venue in the valley outside downtown Salt Lake City. Real Salt Lake of Major League Soccer has played here since it opened, and the Utah Royals of the National Women's Soccer League play here too.
It is a purpose built football ground rather than a converted one, which shows: the stands are close, the pitch is the whole point of the building, and the mountains stand behind the north end. It has also hosted a Major League Soccer All Star Game, Gold Cup fixtures and national team matches, and its first concert was in May 2009. For a city of this size, having a full size professional ground on the main street is genuinely unusual.
The light rail station is the reason to leave the car
Sandy Expo station sits a short walk from the ground and was deliberately built without a car park, because it exists to move people to events rather than to store their vehicles. On a full house that is the difference between leaving at the final whistle and leaving forty minutes later. If you are coming from anywhere on the Blue Line, the train is the better answer, and it is the same decision on an exposition centre weekend.
Two clubs, two seasons, one building
Fixtures for both sides fall between roughly February and October and they do not run on the same schedule, so a summer visit may find either, both in the same week, or neither. There are also concerts, national team matches and one off tournaments in the same window. Check the fixture list rather than assuming a weekend in season means a match, because a dark stadium on State Street is a long way to come for nothing.
The details
Getting there
The ground fronts State Street between 9200 and 9400 South. Sandy Expo station on the TRAX Blue Line is the nearest stop and is a short walk, which is the sensible arrival for a sellout.
Before you go
- Check the fixture list first. Two clubs share the building on different schedules.
- Take the train if you can. The nearest station has no car park by design.
- Evenings cool quickly here once the sun goes behind the Oquirrhs. Take a layer.
- Concert configurations open more seats than football does, so the map changes.
- The exposition centre and the theatre are minutes away and can share a traffic peak.
Take a summer evening at Sandy Amphitheater
1245 East 9400 South · Free and ticketed · May to early October
Sandy built itself an outdoor concert venue on the bench in 1999, spending about 3.5 million dollars of innkeeper's tax on city owned ground at 9400 South. It holds roughly 2,000 reserved seats plus a lawn, giving a published capacity somewhere around 2,700 to 2,750, which is small enough that the back row is still a good seat and large enough to attract national touring acts.
The half that visitors miss is that a meaningful part of the season costs nothing. Sandy City and the Sandy Arts Guild, which has been running since 1985, programme free nights through the summer alongside the ticketed shows. The 2026 season opened on 18 May with a free evening and ran into October. The amphitheatre page covers the season shape, the parking and the gates.
Parking is free, close and limited, in that order
Two lots serve the venue, one west of it off 9400 South and one east off 1300 East, both with accessible parking, and both are free. They are also finite, and on a sold out night they go early. The published advice from the venue is simply to arrive early, which is unglamorous and correct. The surrounding streets are residential, so parking once and walking is worth more than circling for something closer.
It is open air on a bench, which cuts both ways
The seats look west across the valley and the sunsets do a great deal of the work. The same position means the temperature drops fast once the light goes, faster than it does on the valley floor, and there is no roof over the lawn. Most shows start at seven with gates at six. Take a layer even in July, and check the venue's own weather policy before a night that looks unsettled.
The details
Getting there
East on 9400 South. The west lot is reached off 9400 South itself and the east lot off 1300 East, and both are free. Most performances start at seven in the evening with gates opening an hour before.
Before you go
- Look at the free nights as well as the ticketed ones. Both run in the same season.
- Arrive early. Parking is free and it is also finite on a busy night.
- Take a layer. A bench venue after sunset is colder than the valley floor.
- Gates are usually an hour before the show, so there is no advantage to arriving earlier than that on foot.
- Confirm the current season and any weather policy with the venue before travelling.
Skate at the Utah Mammoth Ice Center
The Shops at South Town · About 12 dollars a session · Weekends, year round
The strangest thing in Sandy right now is at the southeast end of a shopping mall. Smith Entertainment Group bought all 111 acres of The Shops at South Town in August 2024 and built a roughly 146,000 square foot practice and training facility into one end of it, with two ice sheets built to National Hockey League regulation. The team moved in during September 2025 and the building opened to the public over three days in February 2026.
What that means for a visitor is that you can skate on a professional practice sheet at weekends. Open skate sessions run Friday to Sunday at about 12 dollars, skates can be hired on site, there are eight locker rooms, a team store, a pro shop and a concession stand, and a seven week Learn to Skate programme runs in the evenings. The downtown page covers the whole conversion.
Public access is a schedule rather than an opening time
This is a working professional facility first and a public rink second, which means the ice is committed to the team, to youth programmes and to hire for large parts of the week. Open skate sessions and public hours are published and they move. Check the current schedule before driving over, and expect the pattern to change through a season rather than to hold from month to month.
The mall around it is still a working mall
None of this closed the shopping centre. The Shops at South Town remained open through the construction and continues to trade, so the ice arrives as an addition to a 1986 mall rather than as a replacement for it. That is a genuinely odd combination to walk through, and it is the clearest single illustration of what is happening to this end of Sandy.
The details
Getting there
The facility is built into the southeast end of the mall on State Street. Mall parking serves it, and the Sandy Civic Center station on the Blue Line is a short distance north for anyone arriving by train.
Before you go
- Check the current public session schedule. Team and programme use comes first.
- Skates can be hired on site, and taking your own is quicker at busy times.
- There are two sheets, so a busy session does not always mean a crowded one.
- The rest of the mall is open and trading, so the trip can be more than the ice.
- Prices and hours are set by the venue and change. Confirm before you travel.
Watch the balloons go up at Storm Mountain Park
980 East 11400 South · Free · Two mornings in August
Sandy runs a hot air balloon festival in August and the 2026 edition, the nineteenth, took two days on 7 and 8 August. The launches happen at sunrise, around half past six in the morning, from Storm Mountain Park at 980 East 11400 South, weather permitting, with tethered rides going 50 to 80 feet up on a first come basis alongside food trucks and a morning programme.
The evening half is separate and it is at a different address. The Balloon Glow runs on the Saturday evening from seven until half past ten at City Promenade, 10000 South Centennial Parkway, with inflatables, a dance programme and a drone show at ten. The whole thing is free, which for an event of that scale in a city of this size is the detail worth leading with.
Sunrise means sunrise, and weather cancels it
Balloons fly when the air is still, which in August in this valley means very early and not much later. A half past six launch means arriving before six if you want to park near the field and watch the envelopes inflate, which is the better half of the spectacle anyway. Wind or an unsettled morning grounds the flight, and that call is made on the day rather than in advance.
The morning and the evening are two different events
People turn up at the wrong address for this more than for anything else on this list. The launches are at Storm Mountain Park at 11400 South. The glow is at City Promenade at 10000 South, about a mile and a half away, on the Saturday evening only. If you are coming for one, be clear which one, and if you are coming for both, plan a gap in the middle of the day rather than a continuous stay.
The details
Getting there
Storm Mountain Park is on 11400 South at about 980 East. City Promenade is on Centennial Parkway at 10000 South, near the civic buildings and the rail corridor, and the two are roughly a mile and a half apart.
Before you go
- Arrive before six for the launch if you want to see the inflation and park close.
- Wind grounds the flight. The call is made on the morning, not in advance.
- Tethered rides are first come and the queue forms before the balloons do.
- The evening glow is at a different address from the morning launch.
- Dates are set annually by the city. Confirm the current ones at sandy.utah.gov.
Walk Historic Sandy and the museum in the old ZCMI building
8744 South 150 East · Free · Tuesday to Thursday and Saturday
The oldest part of Sandy is a compact grid around 8800 South with smaller blocks than anything around it and an east to west Main Street, which is not how the rest of the county was laid out. The Sandy Historic District went on the National Register on 20 April 2007: 266.3 acres, 266 contributing buildings and 51 properties already listed individually, roughly bounded by State Street, 9000 South, 700 East and Pioneer Avenue.
The Sandy Museum sits inside it at 8744 South 150 East, in an 1890 brick ZCMI building, and admission is free. Published hours are Tuesday to Thursday from midday to four and Saturday from ten to two. The collection covers the mining, smelting and railway period that made this a town before it was a suburb, which is the part of Sandy's story that the rest of the city no longer shows you.
Sandy was a smelter town before it was a suburb
The settlement grew as a mining and smelting centre serving the workings up Little Cottonwood, and when the smelting moved north to Murray and Midvale the pressure came off and the district was left largely alone until suburban growth arrived in the 1970s. That is precisely why the old core survives: nothing much wanted the ground for fifty years. The district has seen very little large scale redevelopment since, which is unusual on this side of the valley.
It is a short walk from a light rail station, which is the way to do it
Historic Sandy station sits at 9000 South 165 East, on the edge of the district, and its island platform is built partly over a canal carrying water north from the Jordan River. Arriving on the train and walking the grid is the version of this that makes sense, because the district is small, the streets are narrow by valley standards and the parking is residential.
The details
Getting there
East off State Street around 8800 South. Historic Sandy station on the Blue Line is on the edge of the district with more than 315 free spaces, which makes the train the easiest arrival.
Before you go
- Museum hours are limited and published. Check before travelling for it.
- Admission is free, and so is the station car park a short walk away.
- The district is small. Half an hour of walking covers most of it.
- Streets here are narrower and blocks shorter than the rest of the county grid.
- Confirm current opening times, because small volunteer run museums change them.
Two halves of one city
What is up on the bench, and what is down on the corridor.
This list divides almost perfectly in half along one line, and the line is Highland Drive. Everything east of it is outdoors, free and weather dependent. Everything west of it is indoors, ticketed and scheduled. A day here works much better if you pick a side for the morning and the other for the evening than if you criss cross the city.
| The bench, east | The corridor, west | |
|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Free, apart from the amphitheatre's ticketed nights | Ticketed, apart from the museum and the balloon glow |
| Who runs it | Sandy City, Salt Lake County and the Forest Service | Private venues, a professional sports group and the city |
| Best season | Late spring and early autumn for the trails, summer evenings for the venue | Year round indoors, with the football season running February to October |
| Dogs | Prohibited in Bells Canyon as watershed; allowed in Dimple Dell | Not a factor, since these are indoor and ticketed venues |
| Parking | Free lots that fill on fine mornings and sold out nights | Large free lots at the theatre and the mall, or arrive by train |
| What can cancel it | Weather, wind, snow and mud | A fixture list, a session schedule and published opening hours |
Neither half is the better one. The bench is why people who do not live here drive over, and the corridor is what a wet Tuesday evening in February actually looks like for somebody who does. A visitor with one day should split it. A household weighing an address should walk both.
Before you go
What to sort first, because half of this list can be cancelled.
Nothing here is complicated and all of it is easier to handle at home than in a car park. The outdoor items are weather dependent and the indoor ones are schedule dependent, which means the checking is different in kind rather than in degree.
Sort before you drive
- A ticket, if the theatre, a match or an ice session is the reason for the trip
- A plan for the dog, because the most walked trail in the city does not allow one
- Which trailhead a guide used, since published mileages in Bells Canyon differ by about a mile
- Water for anything on the bench, where almost every trail is shadeless by midday
- A second option for a windy August morning, because the balloons simply do not fly
Check on the day
- Whether two venues on the State Street corridor are busy at the same hour
- The public session schedule at the ice centre, which moves around team use
- Snow level on the bench, because the canyon mouth holds it after the valley clears
- Trail conditions in the gulch after a thaw, since wet trail damages easily
- Museum hours, which are short and volunteer set rather than commercial
Turn up and it is fine
- Dimple Dell from any of its three trailheads, which need nothing arranged
- The all abilities asphalt loop at the Bell Canyon Preservation Trailhead
- A walk around the historic grid, which is free and open at any hour
- The balloon glow in August, which is free and takes no booking
The city recreation centre is not on this list because it is not there. Alta Canyon Sports Center at 9565 South Highland Drive has been closed and taken down for a full rebuild. Its replacement, the Sandy Recreation Center, is being built on the same ground and keeps the outdoor pool, with an expected opening in early 2027. Plenty of guides and directories still list the old building with its old hours. Confirm with Sandy City before planning a swim or a class around it.
What this list leaves out, and why
- The four Cottonwood ski resorts. They are minutes from this city's eastern edge and they belong to eighteen cities rather than to one, so the county canyons page covers them and this companion does not.
- The winter driving rules for those canyon roads, from the traction requirement to the parking systems. Same reasoning, and the county's road rules page is far more use than a paragraph here.
- The east bench trail route. That is a county subject concerning six different cities, it is written once on its own page, and no page on this companion touches it.
- Downtown Salt Lake City, which is a short train ride north and has its own county page. Twenty five minutes on the Blue Line does not make somebody else's downtown into a Sandy attraction.
- The Loveland Living Planet Aquarium, which is over the line in Draper rather than in Sandy, and which the county's family weekends page places properly.
