Moving here Taylorsville
Living in Taylorsville, Utah
What it is like to live in Taylorsville, a flat address in the middle of the valley
Taylorsville is a flat, fully built city in the middle of the Salt Lake Valley, and its best feature is how easy it is to get in and out of, because I-215 runs through it rather than past it. It became a city only in 1996, long after the houses and the parks were already here, so the biggest park, the library, the pool and the largest arena all belong to the county or the college rather than to the city. Here is what that means for someone choosing a street, and what to leave to the city guide.
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah
Updated October 2026
The short answer
Living in Taylorsville means a flat, easy to reach spot in the middle of the valley, with I-215 running through the city and Redwood Road and Bangerter Highway framing it, so almost everywhere in the metro is a one leg drive. Most of the housing went up between the 1950s and the 1980s, so the common home here is a single-level rancher or a split-level on a regular lot, with newer townhomes filling in along the main roads. The twist is ownership: because Taylorsville became a city only in 1996, after it was already built, the biggest park, the library, the pool, the theater and the largest arena all belong to Salt Lake County or the community college, and water comes from its own district. None of that makes it a harder place to live. It just means you keep a few more phone numbers than usual, and that the street you pick matters more than the city you pick.
Taylorsville at a glance
1996
the year it became a city, about a century after it was settled
10.85
square miles of flat valley floor, all of it land
9 miles
to downtown Salt Lake City, about fifteen minutes off-peak
Free
MVX bus rides through April 2029
Buying or selling in Taylorsville?
The setting
A flat valley floor, built between the 1950s and the 1980s
Taylorsville sits in the middle of the Salt Lake Valley at about 4,300 feet, on ground so level that the horizon is the mountains rather than anything nearby. The Jordan River runs down the east edge, Bangerter Highway down the west, and Redwood Road straight through the middle as a six lane state road. The one feature that makes the address work is the I-215 belt route, which passes through the city rather than around it, so getting onto the freeway is a short errand rather than a project.
Farming families settled here in 1848, and a second community called Bennion grew up beside them, but for almost a century and a half neither one was a city. The whole place filled in with postwar housing while it was still unincorporated Salt Lake County ground, and residents voted to incorporate only in 1995. The City of Taylorsville formed on July 1, 1996, during Utah's statehood centennial, which is why the city is younger than most of the houses inside it.
Because so much of it went up in the same few decades, the common home here is a single-level rancher or a split-level on a flat, regular lot, set on the wide, looping streets of mid-century suburban Utah. Newer townhomes and apartments have filled in along Redwood Road and the transit corridors, and a few streets near the river carry larger, older parcels. It is a settled, green, low-rise place, and what varies most from block to block is not the style of the house but what the street backs onto.
Who runs what
Half of what you would assume is the city's belongs to someone else
In most Utah cities the park, the library, the pool and the theater are all municipal, and one phone number answers for the lot. Here they are not, and that changes who you call and, over time, how each place is funded and run.
| What you would assume the city runs | Who actually runs it | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| The biggest park | Salt Lake County, at Valley Regional Park | County hours, county programs and county bookings, funded across the whole county rather than one suburb |
| The public library | Salt Lake County Library | A county card and county hours; there is no separate city library |
| The recreation center and outdoor pool | Salt Lake County, on the park site | Membership and admission are county arrangements, not a city account |
| The biggest arena | Salt Lake Community College | A campus building first; what is on is whatever the college and the state high school association schedule |
| The performing arts theater | Salt Lake County, at the Mid-Valley Performing Arts Center | County programming and ArtTix ticketing, with one of the county's box office windows here |
| Water and sewer | Taylorsville-Bennion Improvement District | A separate special district, so water and sewer come on their own bill from their own board |
Confirm anything you plan to rely on with the operator directly, since hours and programs change.
This is not a knock on the city. A park and a library that serve the whole county sit on a much larger budget than one suburb could manage on its own, and that is usually a good thing. It just means a resident here keeps the county's numbers as well as the city's, and a question asked at the wrong desk gets a friendly redirect instead of an answer. Keep both.
Getting around
A belt route through the middle, a free bus, and no train
The reason people put up with the traffic here is the access. I-215 runs through Taylorsville, so most of the valley is a single freeway leg away, and the airport is about twenty minutes off-peak.
There is no rail station inside the city, but there is bus rapid transit. UTA's Midvalley Express, Route 50X, opened on April 12, 2026 and runs across the valley between West Valley Central and Murray Central, with stops through Taylorsville and one at the Salt Lake Community College campus. It meets TRAX and FrontRunner at its east end and the TRAX Green Line at its west end, and it is free to ride through April 2029. Check the current schedule with UTA before you count on a particular trip.
The flip side of all that access is that the same roads that make the errands short also carry the noise. Redwood Road is a busy state highway down the middle of the city, Bangerter is a separate state road on the west shoulder, and the I-215 embankment runs along the east. Which of those a street sits near matters a lot, and no listing photo will tell you. Stand on any street you are serious about twice, at the hours you would actually be home, on different days.
The way in and out
Approximate drive times
| Destination | Distance | Drive time |
|---|---|---|
| Downtown Salt Lake City | About 9 miles | About 15 minutes |
| Salt Lake City International Airport | About 14 miles | About 20 minutes |
| Big and Little Cottonwood canyon mouths | About 12 miles | About 25 minutes |
| University of Utah | About 15 miles | About 25 minutes |
| Point of the Mountain tech corridor | About 16 miles | About 25 minutes |
Distances are measured from the middle of the city, and the minutes assume an off-peak run. Add time for the I-215 crush and for canyon weather.
The parks
One big county park, and a lot of small neighborhood greens
Taylorsville keeps a bit under five percent of its land in parks, which is respectable for a fully built suburb, but the headline number hides how it breaks down. The single largest park, Valley Regional Park at around ninety acres, belongs to Salt Lake County rather than the city, and it carries the disc golf course, the softball complex, the outdoor pool and the library between them.
The second largest green space on the list is a surprise: about seventy-seven acres at Autumn Meadow, which is a grassed detention basin with nothing built on it. Storm water has to go somewhere in a valley of clay and old lake bed, and here a good deal of it goes into what the map still calls a park. Take those two off the top and what is left is a set of genuine neighborhood parks: Southridge with its ballfields, Millrace along the river, and a scattering of smaller greens under a few acres each.
So the honest picture is one regional destination, one very large drainage field, and a lot of small, ordinary, walkable parks close to home. The Valley Regional Park page and the Jordan River trail page cover the two you would actually drive to.
The second biggest green space on the parks map is seventy-seven acres of grass whose real job is to hold storm water.
The year, in practice
What each season is actually like here
This is flat valley floor near 4,300 feet with no canyon of its own, a river on one edge and a freeway through the middle. The outdoor spaces are level and paved and the indoor ones belong to institutions, which makes for a year with fewer extremes than a lot of Utah addresses.
| Season | What is open and useful | What to plan around |
|---|---|---|
| Spring | The river trail, the disc golf course and the softball complex as league play starts | Pavilion bookings and festival sign-ups both need doing well ahead |
| Summer | The outdoor pool, the whole run of parks, the river corridor early and late | Three days at the end of June when the county park hosts the city festival and the roads around it fill up |
| Fall | The trails at their best, and the county theater's season starting back up | The outdoor pool closes on a schedule, not on the weather, so check before you count on it |
| Winter | The theater, the county library, the recreation center, the campus arena and the paved trail | The valley's inversion season is worth reading up on before a first winter |
| Late winter | The state high school girls basketball championships in the campus arena, February into March | The busiest days in the biggest indoor room in town, and the dates move year to year |
| Any time | The free MVX bus and the I-215 interchange | The access that makes the address work is also the traffic; they are the same roads |
Winter here is a valley floor winter. Taylorsville sits on the flat bottom of the valley, which is exactly where the cold air inversions settle and trap the haze for days at a stretch. That is the same story across the whole valley floor rather than a Taylorsville problem, but it is worth knowing before a first winter. The valley in winter has a page of its own, linked just below.
The bigger picture
What the city guide and the county pages cover in more depth
For the money questions, prices, property taxes, schools, the market and the street by street tour, go to the Taylorsville city guide. It handles all of that at length, and a second short version here would only give you two things to reconcile.
For head to head comparisons, Taylorsville is well covered in the compare section. The three I would start with are Taylorsville vs West Valley City for the neighbor to the north, Taylorsville vs West Jordan for the one to the south, and Murray vs Taylorsville for the city right across the river.
And the things the whole valley shares, the ski canyons, the inversion season, downtown and the river, are written at valley scale rather than pretended to be Taylorsville's own. The four below are the ones a Taylorsville address actually reaches.
The season
The valley in winter
What the cold half of the year on this valley floor is like, and what it closes.
Read the guideNine miles north
Downtown Salt Lake
What the nearest big city holds, from a place that reaches it in one freeway leg.
Read the guideAbout 25 minutes east
The Cottonwood canyons
Two roads, four resorts and a watershed, for a city with no canyon of its own.
Read the guideInside the city
The top 7, ranked
What actually justifies a trip inside these 10.85 square miles, in the order I would do them.
The ranked listKeep reading
More of Taylorsville on The Local
Things to do
The top 7, ranked
A county theater, a 5,000-seat arena, a river confluence and a 1906 farmhouse.
Read the guideThe river
The Jordan River trail system
The full valley trail, not just the stretch that runs inside the city.
Read the guideThe park
Valley Regional Park
Around ninety county acres, with a disc golf course, a pool and a library on one lawn.
Read the guideThe festival
Taylorsville Dayzz
Three days, two z's, and a 5K where some runners carry thirty pounds.
Read the guideThe corridor
The Redwood Road spine
Named for rot proof survey stakes, and now carrying its own state highway.
Read the guideThe companion
Taylorsville, the whole picture
The theater, the river, the county park, the festival and the corridor, together.
Read the pageQuick answers
Living here, answered
Flat, green and easy to get around. Taylorsville sits in the middle of the Salt Lake Valley, and because I-215 runs through it rather than past it, most of the metro is a single freeway leg away and the airport is about twenty minutes off. Most homes are single-level ranchers or split-levels built between the 1950s and the 1980s, with newer townhomes along the main roads. The main quirk is that the biggest park, the library, the pool and the largest arena belong to the county or the college rather than to the city.
It covers 10.85 square miles of flat valley floor, all of it counted as land, and about 60,448 people lived there at the 2020 census. The whole city is roughly fifteen minutes corner to corner, so the distances that matter from an address here are the ones that leave the city, not the ones inside it.
Because it did not need to be one before. Taylorsville was settled in 1848 and the neighboring community of Bennion soon after, and both spent nearly a century and a half as unincorporated Salt Lake County ground while the postwar houses filled in. Residents voted to incorporate in 1995, and the City of Taylorsville officially formed on July 1, 1996, during Utah's statehood centennial.
Mostly Salt Lake County. The largest park, Valley Regional Park, is the county's, and so are the library, the outdoor pool and the recreation center on the same site. The largest arena belongs to Salt Lake Community College, and the performing arts theater is a county venue. The city owns the smaller neighborhood parks. It is a direct result of the city being created in 1996 on ground that was already built.
There is bus rapid transit but no rail station inside the city. UTA's Midvalley Express, Route 50X, opened on April 12, 2026 and runs across the valley between West Valley Central and Murray Central, with stops through Taylorsville and one at the community college. It meets TRAX and FrontRunner at its east end and the TRAX Green Line at its west end, and it is free to ride through April 2029. Check current details with UTA.
The Taylorsville-Bennion Improvement District, an independent special district that is older than the city itself. That is worth knowing before you move in, because water and sewer arrive on a separate bill from a separate board rather than as a line on a city account. The hyphenated name is a reminder that Taylorsville and Bennion were two communities before they became one city.
Downtown Salt Lake City is about 9 miles away, roughly fifteen minutes off-peak by I-15 or I-215. The Salt Lake City International Airport is about 14 miles and around twenty minutes by I-215. The mouths of the Cottonwood ski canyons are about twenty-five minutes east. Freeway times change with traffic, so treat these as a feel for the distances rather than a timetable.
Stand on the specific street twice, at the hours you would actually be in the house, on different days. Taylorsville has the I-215 belt route running through it, a busy state highway down the middle and another on the west shoulder, and those are exactly why the access is so good and exactly why noise lands unevenly from block to block. Everything about price, schools and taxes lives on the city guide.
Taylorsville shows up in a lot of this site's city-vs-city pages, several of them against a Salt Lake County neighbor. The three to start with are Taylorsville against West Valley City to the north, Taylorsville against West Jordan to the south, and Murray against Taylorsville for the city directly across the river. Those pages make the case with numbers, so this one just points you to them.
The city is easy. The street is where the choice is
Ask what a street backs onto rather than what the area is called, because that is the real variable here: six lanes of state highway, a freeway embankment, an irrigation canal, an open river corridor or a floodlit county ballpark. Two streets a five minute walk apart can give you completely different answers, and no photo carries the difference. Point me at the blocks you are weighing and a Salt Lake County partner agent I trust will do the walking, while the numbers and the lending questions stay on my desk.
Or call Scott: (435) 357-4345or send Scott a message
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Eight more doors into Taylorsville, chosen for what this page covers.
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