Fitts Park, and the creek that crosses the city.

10.40 acres on the city's own parks and open space table, at 3050 South 500 East, with a second entrance from 400 East on Front Avenue. That makes it the largest conventional park inside the city boundary. Two larger entries appear on the same table, a nine hole golf course at 79.30 acres and the Jordan River natural areas at 75 acres, but neither is a park in the sense that this one is.

Every day from six in the morning until ten at night, which is a sixteen hour window and longer than a good many municipal parks on this part of the valley floor keep. That applies all year. What runs on a shorter calendar is the reservable pavilion season, which opens for bookings on 1 April and closes on 31 October, and the community garden, which is allocated in the spring.

Robert R. Fitts, who called the 29 September 1938 meeting to order at half past eight in the evening and became the first town president of what was then the town of South Salt Lake. The city incorporated because residents had rejected annexation by Salt Lake City in 1936 over the cost of sewerage and then needed a sewer system of their own, so the park carries the name of the man at the front of that room.

No, and the two are easy to confuse. Fitts Park sits on Mill Creek, which runs east to west across the middle of the city, and the city describes three watercourses on the park site. The Jordan River is the city's entire western boundary, roughly at 1100 West, and it carries a separate set of parks, about three and a half miles of trail and a free nature centre. They are different waterways in different halves of the city.

Through the City of South Salt Lake, on 801-464-6757 or at [email protected], and the timing matters more than the method. Reservations open on 1 April each year and the reservable season runs to 31 October, so a specific pavilion on a specific summer weekend is a thing to ask about in early April rather than in June. Outside that window the park is still open, there is simply nothing to book.

Yes, run by Wasatch Community Gardens, with individual plots available through an application process rather than on a first come basis. That means the spring is when to enquire, and the city parks desk is not the right first call for it. It sits inside the same ten and a half acres as the playgrounds, the pavilions and the trail, which makes this one of the few parks in the valley where you can rent ground rather than just use it.

Through Fitts Park, and not yet as far as the plan intends. The trail was completed through the park in 2019 at the same time as the expansion that took the park across to 500 East, and city figures put 1.5 miles of a planned 3 on the ground. So the section here works, is paved and connects within the park, and the longer route it belongs to is still partly unbuilt. Treat it as a park path rather than as a through route across the city.

Several, and they are small. Kaleidoscope Park at 3116 South 500 East is 0.42 acres of native pollinator planting on the creek. Bickley Park at 2508 South 500 East is 0.87 acres with two playgrounds, a fitness course and pickleball courts. Central Park at 2797 South 300 East is 6.48 acres with a sports field. Granite Library two blocks north carries 2.20 acres of grounds with a playground, a fitness course and an amphitheatre.

For a visitor it is a pleasant hour rather than a reason to cross the valley, and the honest ranking on this companion puts it third. What earns that place is the water and the trees, which are genuinely unusual for a park this size on this part of the valley floor, and the fact that it pairs with a county library two blocks north. For a household weighing an address on the eastern side of the city it is a different question entirely, and a much bigger one.