City Cedar Hills, Utah County
A terraced city on the Bonneville bench, at the mouth of a canyon
Cedar Hills, on the bench at the canyon mouth.
Ten thousand and nineteen people at the 2020 census on 2.73 square miles of ancient lake terrace, stepped up the lower slopes of Timpanogos to the point where the road meets American Fork Canyon. Six pages on the city itself, including the course the residents voted to buy and then argued about for a decade, and a clear handover to the seven region pages that own the mountain, the canyon and the corridor across the bench.
Southern Utah is my home turf. Cedar Hills 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 Utah County partner agent.
Start here
Two and three quarter square miles wedged against a canyon mouth.
Cedar Hills occupies 2.73 square miles of land and counted 10,019 residents at the 2020 census, which puts roughly 3,670 people inside every square mile of it. That density is the fact to hold on to, because it explains almost everything else about the place: there is no room here for a downtown, a second commercial strip or a spare park, and what the city does own it built deliberately and paid for publicly.
The ground itself is a terrace. Ancient Lake Bonneville cut a bench into the lower slopes of Mount Timpanogos and the city sits on it at about 4,935 feet, stepped up in tiers from the valley floor toward the mountain front. The junipers that grow on those slopes were called cedars by the people who settled below them, the hills were named for the trees, and the city was named for the hills. Building began in 1974, incorporation as a town followed on 2 November 1977, and city status arrived on 22 July 1999.
What that leaves is a city with one commercial corner, two elementary schools, a set of parks strung along Cedar Hills Drive, and a golf course at the top of it that the residents voted to buy. The mountain out the east window, the canyon at the end of the road and the county trail across the bench are all shared with the rest of this valley, and each of them is written once at region level rather than badly from one doorstep.
Cedar Hills at a glance
10,019
people at the 2020 census
2.73 sq mi
of land, the smallest on this bench
4,935 ft
on a terrace cut by ancient Lake Bonneville
1977
incorporated as a town on 2 November
The public estate
Four addresses carry almost everything this city offers.
Cedar Hills is small enough that its entire public offer fits in one table, and reading it in advance saves the wrong drive. Three of these four are city property. The fourth is a county corridor reached from a city street, and the difference matters when something is closed.
| The golf club | Heritage Park | Harvey Park | The Canyon Road trailhead | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it actually is | An 18 hole par 71 at the canyon mouth with a six hole par three course beside it | An outdoor amphitheatre finished in 2024, a playground, sand volleyball and a pavilion | A splash pad, a space themed playground with a zipline, pickleball, tennis and basketball | A car park on Canyon Heights Drive with restrooms and picnic tables, opening onto the county trail |
| Where | 10640 North Clubhouse Drive | 4425 West Cedar Hills Drive | 4301 West Harvey Boulevard | 3395 West Canyon Heights Drive |
| Who runs it | Cedar Hills City, through its own golf fund | Cedar Hills City | Cedar Hills City | Utah County's corridor, reached from a city street |
| When it works | Reopened 9 March 2026; front nine only from 8 August 2026 | Year round; the stage works on summer evenings and one December night | Year round, with the water feature on a warm season pattern | Year round; the corridor carries no seasonal gate anywhere on it |
| What it costs | 52 dollars to ride eighteen on a resident weekday rate, checked August 2026 | Nothing to walk in, ticketed for a performance | Nothing | Nothing, including the parking |
Figures as published by Cedar Hills City and by the city's own golf course site, checked 14 August 2026. The golf rates and the course configuration are the volatile lines here and both moved inside the 2026 season, so read the city's current rate card rather than a review site. The trailhead is the city's door onto a Utah County trail rather than a city facility.
The canyon at the end of the road is not free and it is not this city's to run. Cedar Hills sits at the mouth of American Fork Canyon and the old highway through town still meets SR-92 there, which is a genuine advantage and a common source of a wasted morning. The canyon is a federal fee area with its own recreation pass, its own seasonal gates above the fee station and its own reservation system for the cave, none of it administered by Cedar Hills and none of it stated on a city page. Read American Fork's canyon page for the fee, the gates and the parking, and the Timpanogos and Alpine Loop page for the cave and the byway, before you drive up expecting a city amenity.
The civic story
A city of ten thousand people owns a golf course, and argued about it for a decade.
In 2001 the residents of a town then well under ten thousand voted to bond for a golf course, and the vote was close. What followed became the defining municipal argument of the next twelve years. The course lost money almost from the start, roughly half a million dollars a year from 2004 onward, and by the time the Salt Lake Tribune totalled it up in March 2013 the operating losses and bond obligations together came to about 4.3 million dollars. Mayors were elected and unseated over it. Recall attempts, resignations and a long stretch of unusually bitter local politics all trace back to the same eighteen holes.
What is interesting now is that the argument ended in the least likely place, which is neither a sale nor a quiet decline. In December 2025 the council took up a golf course master plan by John Fought Design with GPS Golf, replacing a failing irrigation system, rebuilding tee boxes, reworking bunkers and fixing an eroding path on the eleventh hole. The city kept the course and put money into it. The golf club page carries the numbers, the fee card and the current state of play.
A separate idea from July 2024, a boutique hotel and restaurant on roughly ten acres at the canyon mouth to help retire the bond, was discussed at council and has not been approved. It belongs in the record because people still repeat it as though it were coming. It is not built, it is not funded, and nothing about a Cedar Hills address should be weighed on it.
The practical version, for anyone reading this as a visitor rather than a taxpayer, is short. The course is public, it is genuinely good, it sits in the best position of any course in the north county, and through 2026 it has been half a course while the work goes in. Check before you book.
The town spent twelve years arguing about whether to keep its golf course, then quietly approved a renovation of it.
What belongs to the valley
The mountain, the canyon and the corridor are not this city's property.
Cedar Hills has the best canyon mouth position of the three bench cities and it still does not own the canyon. Nineteen towns share this valley, and the subjects every one of them can see from a window are written once at valley level instead of nineteen times from nineteen doorsteps.
The mountain
Timpanogos and the Loop
SR-92 over the top, the seasonal gate, the ticketed cave, the two summit routes and the colour weekends.
Read the guideThe corridor
The Murdock Canal Trail
Seventeen paved miles laid over an enclosed canal, through seven cities of which this is one.
Read the guideThe doorstep
American Fork Canyon
The fee, the gates, the reservoir and the parking, written by the city that carries the canyon's logistics.
Read the pageDays out
Family weekends in Utah Valley
What a day out costs across the valley once you are willing to drive off this bench, season by season.
Read the guideFour more valley subjects sit a level above this companion. One follows US-189 up the other canyon to a waterfall under reconstruction and a resort under new ownership. One takes the shallow lake at the bottom of the valley and the advisory system that governs swimming in it. One climbs a byway over the shoulder of Mount Nebo and answers whether the gate has opened yet. One treats the two universities strictly as venues. All seven are listed on the Utah Valley hub.
If you only have one day
One version of a good day inside the city limits.
First thing
Tee off at the canyon mouth
The opening drive falls almost 200 feet, and the fourteenth green stands about 750 feet above the river below it.
The golf pageLate morning
Take the trailhead on Canyon Heights
Restrooms, picnic tables and a small lot at 3395 West, opening straight onto seventeen paved county miles.
The ranked sixAfternoon
Walk the hill at Heritage Park
A grass bowl with a stage at the bottom of it, plus sand volleyball, a pavilion and the city's best shade.
The park pageEvening
Come back for a summer show
Two companies use the amphitheatre through the warm months, and one June week takes over the whole city.
The festival pageThe rhythm
One week in June, a summer of outdoor theatre, and a course on its own calendar.
The civic year here turns on the first week of June. The Family Festival ran from 30 May to 6 June in 2026 and finished on the Saturday with a 5K in the morning, a parade north up 4600 West, a car show on the amphitheatre grounds from ten until four, a carnival, a drone show at about a quarter to ten and fireworks at ten. It is the only week in the year when every piece of this city is switched on at once. The Family Festival page has the shape of the week and how to read the schedule.
The summer that follows belongs to the amphitheatre. Creekside Theatre Fest, founded in 2015 as a partnership between the Highland and Cedar Hills arts councils and incorporated as a nonprofit in 2018, stages its outdoor season on the hillside at Heritage Park and its indoor season at a theatre in Pleasant Grove. The 2026 outdoor programme was The Merry Wives of Windsor and A Year With Frog and Toad. The Heritage Park page covers the venue, the seating and what the company has staged on it.
The golf calendar runs on its own clock and in 2026 it ran on an unusual one. The course reopened on 9 March with nine holes and the Short Course available, full eighteen hole play was expected through July and August, and from Saturday 8 August the layout went to the front nine only for the rest of the year while the next phase of construction proceeded. The Short Course stayed open the whole season. That is a renovation timetable rather than a normal season, and it is the single most useful thing to know before driving here to play.
Winter is short on programme and long on quiet. The one fixed December event is Christmas at the Creek, a tree lighting at Heritage Park with music and refreshments; the 2025 edition was held on Monday 1 December at seven in the evening, with a treat for anyone bringing a food donation. The city publishes each year's date rather than fixing it, so treat the day of the week as the pattern and the date as a thing to check.
Nine holes in March, eighteen for two months, then the front nine again from August. That was the 2026 season here.
The Cedar Hills companion
Six pages, which is what 2.73 square miles honestly supports.
Everything The Local has written about Cedar Hills itself: the ranked six, the course the city owns and argued over, the June week, the amphitheatre finished in 2024, and the geography behind the superlative in the city's own name for itself. There is no seventh page because there is no seventh subject, and padding one out would be the easiest thing on this site to spot.
Quick answers
Cedar Hills, answered.
For being the small terraced city at the mouth of American Fork Canyon, and for owning an 18 hole golf course that a city of ten thousand people voted to bond for in 2001 and then argued about for the better part of twelve years. Beyond the course it is known locally for a week long Family Festival at the start of June, for an outdoor amphitheatre at Heritage Park finished in 2024, and for being the smallest of the three bench cities by land area at 2.73 square miles.
It covers 2.73 square miles of land and counted 10,019 residents at the 2020 census, which works out at roughly 3,670 people per square mile. That makes it the smallest of the three Alpine bench cities by area by a factor of about three, since Alpine covers 7.95 square miles and Highland 8.64. By population the gap is much narrower, because Alpine counted 10,251 at the same census. The area figure is the meaningful one and it explains the density.
Yes, and through 2026 it has been open in an unusual shape. The course reopened for the season on 9 March 2026 with nine holes plus the six hole Short Course while an irrigation replacement went in, full eighteen hole play was expected across July and August, and from Saturday 8 August 2026 it went to the front nine only for the rest of the year as the next phase of construction continued. Golfers can play the front nine twice, booking the second round about two and a half hours after the first.
Six things honestly, inside 2.73 square miles: the city owned golf course and its separate six hole par three course at the canyon mouth, Heritage Park and the outdoor amphitheatre finished there in 2024, the Family Festival week at the start of June, the Canyon Road trailhead onto the Murdock Canal Trail, Harvey Park with its splash pad and courts, and the informal bench trail above the last streets. The canyon, the mountain and the cave beyond the city line belong to other pages on this site.
Yes. Cedar Hills is one of the seven cities the corridor crosses, and the city's own way onto it is the Canyon Road trailhead at 3395 West Canyon Heights Drive, which has limited parking, restrooms and picnic tables. Everything else about the trail belongs to the whole north county rather than to this city, so The Local writes it once at valley level: the route, the enclosed canal beneath the pavement, the crossings and the riding year are all on the Murdock Canal Trail page rather than here.
The turn of May into June. In 2026 it ran from 30 May to 6 June and finished on the Saturday, with a 5K in the morning, a parade running north up 4600 West from Deerfield Elementary, a car show on the amphitheatre grounds from ten until four, a carnival, live music, a drone show at about 9.45 in the evening and fireworks at ten. Most of the week is free; the swim night, the Friday dinner and the carnival are the paid parts. The city publishes each year's running order rather than fixing the dates.
It is about as close as a city gets. Canyon Road runs along the eastern edge of Cedar Hills to the SR-92 junction at the canyon mouth, which is a few minutes from most addresses in town. What that proximity does not include is any control over the canyon itself. It is a federal fee area with its own recreation pass, its own seasonal gates on the road above and its own ticketing for the cave, all administered well outside the city, so read the canyon page and the Timpanogos page before treating it as a local amenity.
Most of what the city owns. Harvey Park costs nothing, including its water feature and its courts. Heritage Park costs nothing to walk into, and only a ticketed performance carries a charge. The Canyon Road trailhead and the paved county corridor it opens onto are free including the parking, and the unofficial bench trail above the last streets is free at any hour. The paid list is short: a round of golf, a ticket to a show, and the two or three parts of the June week that carry a fee.
For the trees on the slopes above it, which are junipers rather than true cedars but were called cedars by the settlers below them. The hills took the name from the trees and the city took its name from the hills. Building began in 1974 on ground that had been a turkey ranch through the middle of the twentieth century, the community incorporated as a town on 2 November 1977, and it reclassified as a city on 22 July 1999 after the growth of the 1990s.
Six pages on the city, and seven more on the valley behind it.
A visit here asks whether the course is whole this month. A move asks harder questions: which tier of the bench a street sits on and what that does to grade and drainage, what a lot backs onto in a city with one commercial corner, how the two water connections are set up at a specific address, and what the 2027 district change means for the exact parcel you are circling. Tell me what you are weighing and I will put you with a Utah County partner agent who works this bench, and stay on the file for the financing 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.