The Highland Fling, and the hill it is named after

The end of July into the first day of August. In 2026 it ran Thursday, July 30 to Saturday, August 1 at Heritage Park, 10400 North Alpine Highway, with the city billing the Thursday as Kickoff Night, the Friday as Luau Night and the Saturday as Celebration Day. The shape repeats each year and the individual hours are set annually and move, so Highland City's own Highland Fling page is the only source worth planning a journey around.

Attending is free and so is watching the Highland Games, which is the part most people travel for. Most of what happens on the park across the three days costs nothing: the parade, the athletics, the strongman competition, the fine art show, the concerts and the fireworks. What carries a charge is a handful of individual activities, the 5K entry, and the tournaments if you want to compete rather than watch. Competitors in the athletics register in advance and entries close the week before.

Scottish heavy athletics, run from nine in the morning until five in the afternoon on the Saturday by Utah Heavy Athletics rather than by the city. The card is the traditional set: caber toss, stone put, weight for distance, weight for height and sheaf toss for height, plus the Utah State Hammer Championship, which makes Heritage Park the venue for a state title rather than an exhibition. Spectators pay nothing and the events are thrown on open ground with the crowd on the grass around them.

At Heritage Park, 10400 North Alpine Highway, which is SR-74, on the eastern side of Highland. The park carries a baseball field, sand volleyball, a basketball court, playgrounds, barbecues, a reservable pavilion and its own parking, and the pioneer cabin at 5381 West 10400 North stands on the corner of the same block. On the Saturday the parade closes streets around the park in the morning, so arriving before nine or walking in from a neighboring street is the sensible approach.

Yes, the grand parade goes at nine in the morning on the Saturday, which the city bills as Celebration Day. It follows the 5K and fun run, which starts at seven, and precedes the Highland Games, which run from nine until five on the park itself. The rest of that day carries a kids market, a kids zone, an antique tractor display, a fine art show, a pie eating contest, swing dancing in the afternoon, two concerts from six and a fireworks finale at ten.

Because that was already the local name for a piece of road. Where 10400 North crosses Mitchell Hollow at about 6500 West, the road ran over a culvert with an abrupt drop and rise either side of it, and after the road was paved in 1947 and speeds went up, drivers started taking it deliberately. It collected nicknames, including thrill hill, the Highland dip, Highland Whoopee and the Highland Fling. The city took the last of those for its celebration, where it doubled neatly as the name of a Scottish dance.

Longer than any exact start date I can pin down. Highland City keeps an archive of past celebrations that runs back as far as 2005, and that is the earliest edition on record, so I would treat any specific first year beyond that with caution. What is clear is that the name predates the celebration, because it belonged to a hill on 10400 North long before it belonged to a weekend.

Yes, at ten at night on the Saturday, as the finale of Celebration Day. They follow two live concerts on the park from six, with vendors and food trucks running until ten. Because the celebration falls at the end of July, and because parts of Highland sit inside the city's fireworks restricted zone on the foothill side, the municipal display is the sanctioned version rather than a suggestion that anything similar is permitted on a private lot in the same week.

More than the headline events suggest. A pickleball tournament runs across all three days from seven in the morning to nine at night. A disc golf tournament is played at the city's own eighteen hole course, in two blocks on the Friday and again on the Saturday morning. The pioneer cabin on the corner of Heritage Park, normally an appointment only visit, opened for tours from eleven until three on the Saturday in 2026, with a historical museum session from ten until two on the same ground.