Midway, the town built on top of its own hot springs

On the west side of Heber Valley in Wasatch County, three miles west of Heber City and about eighteen miles south of Park City. The valley floor sits at roughly 5,600 feet, with the Wasatch rising behind the town toward Park City and Snake Creek running north to south through it. Salt Lake City is about 45 to 60 minutes northwest by way of US-40 and I-80, and Provo is reachable over the mountain through Provo Canyon.

From a fort. Families settled along Snake Creek in 1859 in two separate groups, an Upper Settlement and a Lower Settlement, one of which was called Mound City for the pale limestone mounds nearby. In 1866, with the Black Hawk War under way and Brigham Young encouraging fortification, the two settlements agreed to build a single fort halfway, or midway, between them. The name stuck to the combined town, which incorporated on 1 June 1891.

Pot rock is the local name for tufa, the pale calcium carbonate limestone that Midway's geothermal springs precipitate as their water cools and gives up carbon dioxide. It piled up in mounds around the springs, which is where the name Mound City came from, and it was free building stone sitting in heaps. The Town Hall, dedicated in June 1941 with Works Progress Administration funding, has pot rock walls about 20 inches thick, and several older houses around the town center use the same material.

Because Swiss families made up much of the immigration into this valley through the 1860s and 1870s, arriving with names like Gertsch, Huber, Kohler, Probst, Zenger, Durtschi and Abegglen, and they set the architectural and cultural pattern the town still works from. The festival itself began later. It started in 1947 as Harvest Days, established by Joseph B. and Pauline S. Erwin, and grew into the Swiss Days weekend that now fills Town Square the Friday and Saturday before Labor Day.

Midway. The Nordic center sits inside Wasatch Mountain State Park on the southwest side of Midway, about four miles from Town Square by road, with a mailing address on Soldier Hollow Lane in Midway. Heber City is the larger town three miles east and the two share the valley, the school district and the power utility, which is why the venue often gets described as being in Heber Valley rather than in one town or the other.

Biathlon, cross country skiing, Nordic combined, para biathlon and para cross country skiing. Salt Lake City and Utah were awarded the 2034 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games by the International Olympic Committee on 24 July 2024, and Soldier Hollow, which hosted biathlon and cross country in 2002, keeps those disciplines for the Games. It has run as a public Nordic center in the years between, so it comes to 2034 as a working venue rather than a new one.

Four things, and they are unusually distinct for a town this size. A geothermal dome at the Homestead that people swim and scuba inside. Soldier Hollow, the 2002 Olympic Nordic venue, which is four miles from Town Square and confirmed for the 2034 Games. Swiss Days, a market weekend before Labor Day that draws a crowd many times the size of the town. And a historic core built out of pot rock, the pale limestone the hot springs themselves left behind.

Only if the parcel sits in the right place. Midway concentrates permitted transient rentals in a Transient Rental Overlay District and limits them in residential zones, and the city council amended the ordinance on 2 December 2025 to add an entrance plaque showing the manager's contact details, to require whole unit rental rather than part of a home, to hold the property to the code regardless of who is occupying it, and to lengthen the violation probation period from six months to twelve. Two violations in twelve months can cost the business license for a year. Confirm any specific address with Midway City in writing.

It is a valley floor address rather than a slopeside one, and that is the trade. Park City and Deer Valley are about twenty miles north, roughly twenty five to thirty minutes, and the Deer Valley East Village expansion has added access from the Jordanelle side of the valley. What Midway has out its own door is Nordic rather than alpine: Soldier Hollow runs public cross country trails, a biathlon range and 1,200 foot tubing lanes. The alpine resorts and the lift served terrain are covered on the Park City companion.