The Jordan River starts here

At the north end of Utah Lake, inside Saratoga Springs about 0.3 mile south of Lehi. The Jordan is the lake's only outlet and it runs about 50 miles north, through the gap in the Traverse ridge and the length of the Salt Lake Valley, to the Great Salt Lake. What stands at the Lehi end is a set of outlet control gates, a pumping plant that replaced an original station built at the outlet in 1902, a small park and the southern trailhead of the Jordan River Parkway.

No, and this is the commonest error about this river. Turner Dam sits twelve miles downstream at the Jordan Narrows, in Salt Lake County, where it is the first dam on the river and diverts water into the East Jordan Canal and the Utah and Salt Lake Canal. What is at the Lehi outlet is gates and a pumping plant, which is a different kind of structure doing a different job. The Narrows, the dam and the canal split belong to Bluffdale's reach of the river.

An agreement between water users that set a compromise level for the lake and established that when the water stands above that level, the outlet cannot be blocked. The practical effect is that the gates at the Lehi end are not a local decision: the state engineer regulates them against that fixed elevation. The compromise elevation was confirmed by a court roughly a century later, in the mid 1980s, and that nineteenth century agreement still governs the river today.

Yes, and it is one of the better bank access points on this end of the lake, which matters because most good access on Utah Lake assumes a boat and a ramp fee. The pumphouse is a known channel catfish spot, best from late spring through the hot months and often better in the evening than at midday, and white bass move toward the incoming water in late spring, which puts the strongest window between April and June. Check the current advisory position before you or a dog touch the water.

That is a state question rather than a city one, and it changes week to week in summer. In warm months the state Department of Environmental Quality posts harmful algal bloom advisories on Utah Lake, and in bloom years those advisories reach the lower Jordan River below the outlet as well as the lake itself. At the Warning level the guidance is do not swim, boating is OK, and be cautious eating fish. The state harmful algal bloom monitoring program is the authority on it.

At the pumphouse by the lake outlet, just south of Lehi in Saratoga Springs, which is its southern terminus, with a small park, a parking lot and a model aircraft field beside it. From there it runs north along the river into Salt Lake County and eventually toward the Great Salt Lake. Lehi's own trail list gives 9.16 miles for the Lehi section of the Jordan River Parkway, so take the current mileage from the city.

Through a connector of roughly a mile and a half built by Lehi with the county. The bench trail ends at the Bull River Road trailhead where the corridor meets Timpanogos Highway, and from there the route follows Clubhouse Drive, Garden Drive and Desert Forest Lane past the Lehi commuter rail station to reach the Jordan River Parkway. That link is what allows a rider to leave Orem on the bench, cross seven cities and finish on pavement in the next county, with a train home from the station midway.

About 50 miles by river. The Jordan leaves the north end of Utah Lake in Saratoga Springs, just south of Lehi, squeezes through the single gap in the Traverse Mountains known as the Jordan Narrows, and then runs the length of the Salt Lake Valley to the Great Salt Lake's marshes. Every city it passes through downstream inherits water that entered the river at this one point, which is why the outlet is regulated by the state engineer rather than by anybody local.

Yes, and it is free. There is a parking lot at the pumphouse where the road runs out against the lake, with a small park and the model aircraft field beside it, and the trailhead for the parkway sits there. The approach is southwest out of Lehi toward the lake, following the signs for the Jordan River Parkway. Nothing here is ticketed or gated, so the practical constraints are heat and shade rather than hours: the trail north is exposed for a long way.