Things to do in Erda, Utah, from a 1949 drive-in to a drop zone over the Great Salt Lake.

Most people who pass the little airport on the northwest side of Erda never realize what flies out of it. Skydive Utah has operated at Tooele Valley Airport, also known as Bolinder Field, since 1983, and it is the most experienced drop zone in the state. It runs first time tandem jumps, where you go up strapped to an instructor, along with a full student program for people working toward a license.

The jumps here climb higher than anywhere else in Utah, up to about 13,500 feet, on a fast King Air turbine that reaches altitude in a few minutes. From the top the view takes in the whole valley and the Great Salt Lake to the north, which is a large part of why people jump here rather than somewhere flatter. It flies mostly in the warmer months and books by appointment, weather and winds permitting.

It is a real, public facing attraction hiding on a county airfield, and it is about the most memorable thing you can do inside Erda's own limits.

Erda's third attraction is the one you cannot buy a ticket for: the land itself. The city covers more than twenty square miles of valley floor, most of it large lots and horse property laid out on a grid of section roads, with the Oquirrh Mountains rising to the east and the Stansburys to the west. There is no downtown to speak of, and that openness is exactly the point.

A slow loop on roads like Droubay and the numbered grid is a real way to spend an unhurried hour, mountains on both horizons, pastureland and corrals along the shoulders, and far more sky than you get on the Salt Lake side of the hill. Sunrise and sunset are the best of it, when the light rakes across the valley and the Oquirrhs turn gold. Keep to the public roads and the posted speeds, since most of what you are looking at is private ground and working property.

It is a quiet, free thing to do, and it is the truest picture of what Erda actually is.

The single thing most people associate with Erda is not actually in Erda. The Peak Sports and Entertainment Complex, which many locals still call by its old name, Deseret Peak, sits on county ground along State Route 112 between Grantsville and Tooele, a five to ten minute drive west of Erda's roads. The geography is worth pinning down, because maps and older listings sometimes place it in town.

The complex is the county's event hub, with a fairgrounds, an indoor arena and convention hall, baseball and softball fields, and motocross and BMX tracks. Its busiest stretch is the county fair in late summer, usually the last days of July into the first of August, which brings a junior livestock show and auction, a home arts exhibit, a rodeo, and a demolition derby. The fair, the rodeo, and the year round venue are covered in full on Tooele's guide.

For an Erda visitor it is the easy answer to a slow day: a few minutes down State Route 112, and there is almost always something running on the grounds.

A short drive the other direction, north toward Interstate 80, lands you at one of the valley's oldest buildings. The Benson Gristmill was built in 1854 of rock and heavy timber, and it still stands in Stansbury Park as a county historic site, with a seasonal calendar of events on its grounds. From Erda it is roughly ten minutes north on State Route 36.

It is a genuine pioneer landmark rather than a reproduction, and the grounds around it make an easy, low key stop, especially paired with the rest of what Stansbury Park holds a few minutes on: a community lake, a golf course, and an observatory. Because the mill sits in the next community over, the full write up lives on the Stansbury Park page.

Together with the drive-in and the fairgrounds, it rounds out an honest Erda day: two of the stops are in town, and the historic ones are a short, marked drive to either side.