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.
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
The resort town
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, a Gold-Level IMBA Ride Center that is one of only a handful 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.
All the Park City guides
Ten guides, one town.
Every Park City guide in one place. Pick a door; they all lead to the same town.
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
ReadBetween two reservoirs
Heber City, the valley between two reservoirs.
The Wasatch County seat at about 5,600 feet, with Jordanelle at the north gate of its valley, Deer Creek at the south, and ten miles of rebuilt blue ribbon river running between them. An 1899 branch line still crosses the valley floor, sailplanes have flown off it since 1955, and Main Street doubles as a US highway, and a bypass around it has been debated for years. More Heber City guides go deeper.
The town page
Heber City, in full
A county seat at 5,600 feet with a state park reservoir at each end of its valley, a heritage railroad, and a highway for a high street.
Read the pageThe top 11
Things to do, ranked
An 1899 train to Deer Creek, ten miles of tailwater, a marina, a wind sports beach and a demolition derby in late July.
Read the top 11The north gate
Jordanelle and Keetley
Three recreation areas, a 22 mile perimeter trail, and a mining town with a 1942 story sitting under 320,300 acre feet of water.
Read the guideFor movers
Main Street is a highway
Five housing markets under one city name, a cold pocket winter, and nightly rental decided by a zoning map.
Read the guideBuilt on hot springs
Midway, the town built on its own hot springs.
About six thousand people at roughly 5,600 feet on the west side of Heber Valley, on a geothermal field that produced both the dome people drive here to swim inside and the pot rock the town hall is made of. Settled in 1859, named for a fort raised halfway between two settlements, and next to an Olympic Nordic venue confirmed again for the 2034 Games. Three more pages fill out the Midway guides.
The town page
Midway, the whole picture
A Swiss settled valley floor town on a geothermal field, with an Olympic venue four miles out and a rental overlay that decides a great deal.
Read the pageThe top 9
Things to do, ranked
A hot spring inside a limestone dome, seven floodlit tubing lanes, four public eighteens and a market weekend that dwarfs the town.
Read the top 9The dome
Homestead Crater
A spring that built a fifty five foot roof over itself, and the hundred and ten foot tunnel driven into the side of it in 1996.
Read the guideThe venue
Soldier Hollow
A 2002 Olympic Nordic venue that stayed open, confirmed again for biathlon and cross country at the 2034 Games.
Read the guideGateway to the Uintas
Kamas, where the mountain road starts.
About 2,100 people at 6,690 feet in the southwest corner of Summit County, on hay ground worked since 1859. State Route 150 leaves the middle of town and climbs 54 miles over the highest paved road in Utah, and for four months of the year a padlock fifteen miles east of Main Street takes most of it out of service. Sixteen miles the other way is Park City. Three more pages fill out the Kamas guides.
The town page
Kamas, from the road up
A working ranch valley in Summit County where the pavement into a two million acre national forest starts at a traffic light on Main Street.
Read the pageThe top 7
Things to do, ranked
Fiesta Days since 1938, a drugstore soda fountain in a 1918 building, a smokehouse on the byway and a rodeo five miles north.
Read the top 7The byway
The Mirror Lake Highway
Fifty four miles of SR-150 to the Wyoming line, what the recreation pass actually costs, and every milepost worth stopping at.
Read the guideFor movers
The 84036 question
One ZIP code, two counties and four different markets. How to tell which Kamas a listing is really in before you write an offer.
Read the guideCity guides
Every town, on the practical side.
All four towns have a full set of guides above. These are the practical city guides for the same ground: prices, neighborhoods, schools, utilities and the listings themselves.
The anchor town
Park City
The silver town carrying the region's ski acreage, its jobs and its attention, with the market boundaries that decide what an address there really means.
The city guide~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.