The corridor Taylorsville
There are no redwoods in this valley, and there is a reason
The Redwood Road spine, and the stakes it is named after.
Surveyors marking a line down the west side of the Jordan River used redwood stakes because they did not rot in the ground, and the line they marked became the road. It was built in 1895, rebuilt in concrete in the 1920s, numbered SR-68 in 1943 and widened to six lanes before the 2002 Olympics. Today it carries a college campus whose loop road is a state highway in its own right, a 5,000 seat arena, and a bus line that replaced an interurban abandoned generations ago.
Southern Utah is my home turf. Taylorsville is not, so these pages are researched rather than lived: checked against city, county and venue sources, and dated so you can see how fresh they are. For the on-the-ground work here I lean on a Salt Lake County partner agent.
Start here
A road named for the stakes that did not rot.
There are no redwoods in the Salt Lake Valley and there never have been, which makes the name of this road a genuine puzzle until you hear the answer. Surveyors running a line parallel to the base meridian down the west side of the Jordan River needed markers that would survive being driven into wet valley ground and left there, so they used redwood stakes, chosen because they did not decay. The line those stakes marked became known as the Redwood Line, and when a proper thoroughfare was built along it in 1895 to serve the west side of Salt Lake County, it took the name with it.
Everything that has happened to the road since has been a matter of upgrading a surveyor's convenience into a spine. It was rebuilt in concrete in the 1920s, which made it usable by the mixture of cars, wagons and horses then sharing it. Electricity reached these farms along it in 1916. SR-68 was routed onto it in 1943, and it was widened to six travel lanes with a centre turn lane in the run up to the 2002 Winter Olympics. A hundred and thirty years after the stakes, it is a six lane state highway carrying the length of a city that did not exist when it was built.
What sits on it now is the reason it is worth a page. The flagship campus of Salt Lake Community College fronts it, and the loop road around that campus is itself a numbered state route. A 5,000 seat arena stands on that loop. A city park and skate park sit on the road at 4721 South. And the junction with 4800 South, which is now an ordinary suburban crossroads, was this community's business district in the 1890s.
The corridor in numbers
1895
the year a road was built along the surveyors' Redwood Line
1943
the year SR-68 was routed onto it
1.718
miles of state highway that are just a campus loop road
6
travel lanes plus a centre turn lane, widened before 2002
Along the road
Six stops on one north to south line.
Read from the northern end of the city southwards, the corridor stacks up a college, an arena, a skate park, a vanished business district and a junction that UDOT is currently rebuilding. Here is what each one is and what it is worth to you.
| What | Where on the road | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| The I-215 interchange | Where the belt route crosses the corridor | The reason this city is reachable in one leg from most of the valley, and the northern anchor of UDOT's current project on the road |
| SLCC Taylorsville Redwood Campus | Fronting the road at about 4600 South | The college's flagship campus and the largest single institution on the corridor. Its perimeter road is a separate numbered state route |
| SR-292, the campus loop | 1.718 miles, four parts, designated 1969 | Three of its outlets are onto Redwood Road and one is onto 2200 West. A loop road around a community college that is legally a state highway |
| Bruin Arena at the Lifetime Activities Center | 2055 Bruin Blvd, on the campus loop | A 5,000 seat arena opened in 1996, hosting college basketball and the closing rounds of the state high school girls championship each late winter |
| Taylorsville Park and the skate park | 4721 South Redwood Road, 6.96 acres at the north end | A city community park with many trees and a skate park at its southern end, and the corridor's one straightforward stop for an hour |
| The 4800 South junction | A suburban crossroads today | The site of the 1890s business district, whose largest store was Lindsay and Company, later the Taylorsville Mercantile Company, and of the old Plymouth Elementary School |
Route designations and lengths from the state highway route listing, campus and arena details from Salt Lake Community College, park details from the City of Taylorsville, historic detail from the published local history. Checked 8 August 2026.
A community college loop road being its own state highway is not a filing error. SR-292 is a four part route of 1.718 miles, designated in 1969, consisting of the perimeter road around the SLCC Redwood Campus, with three outlets onto SR-68 and one onto 2200 West. Utah has a small family of these: short numbered routes that exist to carry state maintenance responsibility onto the grounds of state institutions. The practical consequence for a driver is that the campus loop appears on a highway map as a highway, so a routing app can put you on it confidently and drop you at an entrance that is nowhere near the building you wanted.
The rails
This corridor had electric transit a hundred and thirteen years before it got it back.
In 1913 the electric Salt Lake Inter-Urban, known as the Orem Line, was built parallel to Redwood Road at about 1800 West, with a station at Bennion. From it you could ride into Salt Lake City, or south as far as Payson. Then the line went, as almost every interurban in America went, and for the better part of a century the corridor's only public transport was a bus on a state highway. The city that eventually grew here was built entirely inside that gap.
It came back on 12 April 2026, in a different form. UTA's MVX, Route 50X, runs between West Valley Central and Murray Central through this city, with seven stations inside the boundary and a stop on the college campus, covering the full route in about half an hour, and it is zero fare until spring 2029. It is a bus rather than a train and there is still no rail station inside this city, which is the honest framing. What it does is connect the corridor to TRAX and FrontRunner at one end and to the Green Line at the other.
The part of it that belongs on a corridor page rather than a transit page is the art. UTA, the city and the college commissioned custom glass panel artwork for seven Taylorsville stations and the campus roundabout, fifteen pieces in all, by named artists. Three of them are about the water on the city's other boundary: Jordan River Moonrise by Caro Nilsson, Birds of the Jordan River by Chuck Landvatter and All the Fish by Stephanie Swift. A bus corridor that put fifteen commissioned artworks on its shelters is taking itself seriously as a piece of place rather than as a timetable.
An interurban ran beside this road in 1913 and nothing replaced it until 2026, which is a long time for a corridor to hold its breath.
What is changing
UDOT owns this road, and it has published a plan for it.
This is the section of this page most likely to go out of date, so it is dated and attributed. Everything below is UDOT's published position as of 8 August 2026 and should be checked against current project information before you plan a journey around any of it.
| What UDOT publishes | What it means for a driver | |
|---|---|---|
| The scope | Improvements to SR-68 from 6200 South to I-215 | That is the full length of this road through the city, from its southern junction up to the belt route |
| A northbound lane | An added northbound travel lane from 6200 South to the I-215 interchange | Capacity northbound, in the direction of the freeway and the campus, which is where the morning demand runs |
| The 6200 South intersection | A partial continuous flow intersection on the south leg, for northbound traffic | Left turning and through traffic move at the same time, which reads oddly the first few times you drive it |
| The I-215 ramps | Dual on-ramp lanes on both the eastbound and westbound accesses | Two lanes onto the belt route in each direction rather than one, at the corridor's busiest point |
| The timeline | No completion date was published on the project page on 8 August 2026 | Treat this as work in progress rather than as a scheduled finish, and check before you budget a journey time |
| Bangerter, on the other edge | Four new free flowing interchanges completed and celebrated on 21 November 2025 | That is the Bangerter programme, on the city's western shoulder, and it is a different scheme from anything on Redwood Road |
Every line above is UDOT's published position on 8 August 2026 and nothing more. Highway schemes are re-scoped and re-sequenced routinely, so read this as a snapshot of what was on the project page on that date.
Do not merge the Redwood Road work with the Bangerter work. They are separate schemes on opposite edges of the city. Redwood Road is SR-68, a state highway running north to south through the middle of this city, and the current published work on it is between 6200 South and I-215. Bangerter Highway runs along the city's western shoulder and is a long running conversion to free flowing interchanges, whose most recent four were completed on 21 November 2025, leaving Bangerter stoplight free from I-15 in Draper up to 4100 South. Two different roads, two different programmes, two different sets of delays. And neither of them is the Mountain View Corridor, which is a third thing further west again.
Off the corridor
What sits either side of this line.
Redwood Road is the middle of the city. The county's institutions are a corridor west of it and the river is a mile east, and the county's own subjects sit beyond the boundary entirely.
West of it
Valley Regional Park
Ninety odd county acres on 2700 West, with a pool, a library and a recreation centre on them.
The park pageEast of it
The Jordan River trail system
The water on the far boundary, four landlords, and a creek arriving from 11,500 feet.
The river pageNorth of it
Downtown Salt Lake
The centre nine or ten miles up the valley, and what a single leg journey reaches there.
Read the guideLiving on it
A mid valley address
What being equidistant from everything actually asks of a household here, in practice.
Moving hereKeep reading
More of Taylorsville on The Local.
Things to do
The top 7, ranked
A county theatre, a 5,000 seat arena, a confluence and a farmhouse from 1906.
Read the guideThe river
The Jordan River trail system
The city that publishes the whole trail instead of its own slice of it.
Read the guideThe park
Valley Regional Park
Ninety one acres, eighteen disc golf baskets, 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 guideMoving here
A mid valley address
Equidistant from everything, and landlord to almost none of its own landmarks.
Read the guideThe companion
Taylorsville, the whole picture
The theatre, the river system, the county park, the festival and the corridor, together.
Read the pageQuick answers
The corridor, answered.
Because of the stakes. Surveyors running a line parallel to the base meridian down the west side of the Jordan River needed markers that would not decay once driven into the ground, and they used redwood for the job. The line became known as the Redwood Line, and when a road was built along it in 1895 as the main thoroughfare for the west side of Salt Lake County, it inherited the name. There are no redwoods in the Salt Lake Valley and there never were.
Yes. SR-68 was routed onto Redwood Road in 1943, which means the road is owned and maintained by the Utah Department of Transportation rather than by the cities it passes through. It was rebuilt in concrete in the 1920s and widened to six travel lanes with a centre turn lane in the run up to the 2002 Winter Olympics. Anything happening to the road is a UDOT decision and is published on UDOT's project pages.
The loop road around the Salt Lake Community College Redwood Campus, and it is a numbered state highway in its own right: a 1.718 mile, four part route designated in 1969, with three outlets onto SR-68 and one onto 2200 West. Utah has a small family of these short routes that carry state maintenance onto the grounds of state institutions. The practical effect is that a routing app treats the campus loop as a highway and may drop you at the wrong entrance.
Yes, and it seats five thousand. The Lifetime Activities Center, known as Bruin Arena, stands at 2055 Bruin Blvd on the SLCC Taylorsville Redwood Campus, opened in 1996 and owned by the college. It is home to the SLCC Bruins, it hosts the closing rounds of Utah's high school girls basketball state championships every February and March, and it also holds a fitness centre, a weight room and teaching space.
It had an electric interurban. The Salt Lake Inter-Urban, known as the Orem Line, was built in 1913 and ran parallel to Redwood Road at about 1800 West with a station at Bennion, carrying passengers north into Salt Lake City and south as far as Payson. It is long gone, and nothing replaced it until UTA's MVX bus rapid transit line opened on 12 April 2026. There is still no rail station inside the city boundary.
It serves the campus on Redwood Road rather than running the length of the road. Route 50X links West Valley Central and Murray Central with fifteen stations, seven of them inside Taylorsville plus a stop at the SLCC Taylorsville Redwood Campus, and it covers the whole route in about half an hour. It has been zero fare since it opened on 12 April 2026 and is published as remaining so until spring 2029. Check current details with UTA before building a car free plan around it.
Fifteen custom glass panel pieces, commissioned by UTA with the city and the college for seven Taylorsville stations and the campus roundabout. The artists and titles are published, and three of the works take their subject from the river on the city's other boundary: Jordan River Moonrise by Caro Nilsson, Birds of the Jordan River by Chuck Landvatter and All the Fish by Stephanie Swift. It is an unusual amount of commissioned work for a bus corridor.
As of 8 August 2026 UDOT publishes a project on SR-68 between 6200 South and I-215 that adds a northbound travel lane, installs a partial continuous flow intersection on the south leg of the 6200 South junction for northbound traffic, and puts dual on-ramp lanes on both the eastbound and westbound accesses onto I-215. No completion date appeared on the project page on that date, so check UDOT's current information before relying on a journey time.
No, and mixing them up is easy because both run through the same city. Redwood Road is SR-68 through the middle of Taylorsville and carries UDOT's 6200 South to I-215 project. Bangerter Highway runs along the city's western shoulder and is a separate long running conversion to free flowing interchanges, whose most recent four were completed on 21 November 2025, leaving it stoplight free from I-15 in Draper up to 4100 South. Neither is the Mountain View Corridor, which is a third road further west.
One road, and most of the city hangs off it.
Six lanes of state highway through the middle of a built out suburb makes for very different addresses a single block either side, and this is also the corridor carrying the college, the arena and the busiest junction in the city. Frontage, setback and which cross street you sit on decide more here than any photograph will show. Give me the cross streets and a Salt Lake County partner agent will stand on them at the hours that count, while I keep the numbers and the lending side.
Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.