Region Summit and Wasatch counties
The other side of the range
The Wasatch Back, from The Local.
Everyone in Salt Lake looks east at a wall of mountains. This is what is behind it: an old silver town that became the largest ski resort in the country, a Swiss-heritage valley, and a highway that climbs into the Uintas.
Southern Utah is my home turf. Park City 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 Summit County partner agent.
Start here
One range, two completely different sides.
The Wasatch Back is the eastern flank of the Wasatch Range, and the simplest way to understand it is by what it is not. It is not the Salt Lake Valley. It sits over the top of the same mountains, roughly 35 minutes from downtown Salt Lake City through Parley's Canyon when the weather holds, and it behaves like a different place entirely.
Administratively it is Summit County and Wasatch County. Practically it is four towns and a lot of open country: Park City up at nearly 6,936 feet, Heber City and Midway down in the broad valley to the south, and Kamas out east where the Mirror Lake Highway starts climbing into the Uinta Mountains. Jordanelle, Rockport and Deer Creek reservoirs sit between them.
What ties it together is elevation and snow. This is high ground with a long winter, which is why the 2002 Winter Olympics happened here, why the 2034 Games are coming back, and why the economy on this side of the range is built on something completely different from the one on the other side.
Park City at a glance
~6,936 ft
Park City town elevation
400+ mi
of public trail around Park City
~35 min
to Salt Lake City and the airport
2034
the Winter Games return to Utah
Live on The Local
First up: Park City.
Park City is the obvious place to start and the easiest place to get wrong. It is an 1880s silver-mining town that nearly died, got saved by a chairlift in 1963, hosted an Olympics in 2002, and now carries the largest ski resort in the United States by skiable acreage on one side of town and a skis-only resort on the other.
Underneath the resort story is a real town with a preserved Main Street, more than 400 miles of public trail, the only Gold-Level IMBA Ride Center in the world, and a summer season that a lot of residents quietly prefer to the winter one.
Ten pages cover it: the two mountains, the street, the trails on foot and on two wheels, the Olympic Park, the summer, the history, what costs nothing, and what your first year here actually looks like.
The Park City shelf
Ten guides, one town.
Everything The Local has written about Park City so far. Pick a door; they all lead to the same place.
Things to do
The top 12, ranked
ReadTwo mountains
Park City Mountain vs Deer Valley
ReadThe old town
Historic Main Street
ReadOn two wheels
The 8 best rides
ReadOn foot
The 8 best hikes, ranked
ReadThe other season
Summer, the quiet argument
ReadBear Hollow
The Utah Olympic Park
ReadCosts nothing
10 free things to do
ReadSilver first
From silver to skiing
ReadFor movers
Your first year in Park City
ReadThe rest of the region
Three more towns, all inside half an hour.
The Local has not built shelves for these yet. Until it does, the practical city guides cover the ground.
~25 to 30 min south
Heber City
The Wasatch County seat, down in the broad valley with Jordanelle at its north end and more attainable housing than the resort core.
The city guide~25 min south
Midway
A Swiss-heritage town next to Heber, with Soldier Hollow and its 2002 Olympic Nordic venue on the edge of it.
The city guide~20 to 25 min east
Kamas
The gateway to the Mirror Lake Highway and the Uinta Mountains, where the alpine lakes and the camping start.
The city guideQuick answers
The Wasatch Back, answered.
The eastern side of the Wasatch Range, on the opposite flank from the Salt Lake Valley. It covers Summit County and Wasatch County, and the towns people mean by it are Park City, Heber City, Midway and Kamas, with the Uinta Mountains further east and Jordanelle, Rockport and Deer Creek reservoirs scattered through it. Salt Lake City sits over the mountains to the west, about 35 minutes from Park City through Parley's Canyon in clear conditions.
Park City is the best known, at roughly 8,400 residents near 6,936 feet in Summit County. Heber City sits about 25 to 30 minutes south in Wasatch County, Midway is next to it with Soldier Hollow and a Swiss-heritage main street, and Kamas is 20 to 25 minutes east of Park City at the mouth of the Mirror Lake Highway into the Uintas. Coalville, further northeast, is the Summit County seat.
Yes, but a great deal of what people call Park City is unincorporated Summit County rather than the city itself. The Snyderville Basin, including Kimball Junction, Canyons Village, Jeremy Ranch, Pinebrook and Promontory, sits outside the city limits with a different sales tax, a different planning department and a separate authority for licensing nightly rentals.
Scott Buehler is based in Southern Utah, so for on-the-ground work in the Wasatch Back he connects buyers and sellers with a trusted local partner agent and stays on the file for the research and the financing side. If you work with a referred agent, that agent's brokerage pays a referral fee to Real Broker, LLC out of the agent's compensation rather than as an added cost to you, and using a referred agent is never required.
One range. Two very different sides of it.
My base is Southern Utah, so for the on-the-ground work in the Wasatch Back I connect buyers and sellers with a trusted local partner agent and stay on the file for the homework and the financing side. Tell me what you are weighing and I will get you the honest version.
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.