The landmark Morgan County
A published state geological site, a free freeway pullout, and a cement works that shares the name and nothing else
Devil's Slide, two limestone walls standing on their edge.
About 40 feet high, 25 feet apart and several hundred feet long, with the soft rock that used to lie between them washed out. The Utah Geological Survey publishes it as a GeoSight and explains the sequence: sediment laid down in a shallow sea 170 to 180 million years ago, folded and tilted to near vertical about 75 million years ago, then exposed by erosion. It is free, it takes a quarter of an hour, and it is seen from a pullout on Interstate 84 near milepost 111. The cement plant a few miles of road away shares the name and is an entirely separate subject, with a state permit and no public access.
I work Iron and Washington counties at the far south end of the state, three hundred miles from this valley, so these pages are researched rather than lived. Everything on them was taken where it is issued: the Bureau of Reclamation's Weber Basin Project history and its own facility records, Utah State Parks for East Canyon and Lost Creek and both fee tables, the enrolled text of House Bill 257 of 2021, the Utah Geological Survey's published entry on Devil's Slide, the Division of Air Quality's October 2025 approval letter for the cement plant, Morgan County's adopted Resource Management Plan and its own parks and airport pages, Morgan City's utility and recreation pages, the Morgan County Historical Society, the Morgan School District and the federal school data behind it, the state transportation department's seasonal roads list, the federal historic district nomination signed by Utah's preservation office, and the Fish and Wildlife Service on Round Valley. Every figure carries the day it was read. A Weber and Morgan partner agent takes the ground level work.
The short answer
Devil's Slide is a pair of parallel limestone walls in Weber Canyon, about 40 feet high, 25 feet apart and several hundred feet long, seen from a scenic pullout on Interstate 84 near milepost 111 east of Morgan. It is free, it is open every hour of every day because it is a freeway pullout, and ten to fifteen minutes covers it. The Utah Geological Survey publishes it as one of its GeoSights and explains the rock: the Twin Creek Formation, about 2,700 feet thick, laid down in a shallow sea 170 to 180 million years ago and tilted to near vertical about 75 million years ago. A cement plant a few miles of road away carries the same name and is a completely separate thing. Checked 21 August 2026.
The live question
Where exactly do you pull off, and which direction do you need to be travelling?
The pullout is near milepost 111 on Interstate 84, and the reason this page will not give a single exact milepost is that the issuing body gives two. The Utah Geological Survey's own GeoSights entry, read 21 August 2026, says after milepost 110 in one route description and just after milepost 111 in the other. That inconsistency was present when the research for this region began and it was still present on the day this page went up. Near milepost 111 is the honest form of the answer.
The direction question is harder and nobody answers it. The survey gives two sets of directions and both of them arrive travelling west. From Salt Lake City it routes drivers 11.3 miles east on Interstate 80 to exit 134, then north 27.7 miles on SR-65 to Henefer, then west one mile to Interstate 84 and west two miles to the viewpoint. From Farmington it routes them north 10.7 miles on US-89, then right onto Interstate 84 for approximately 23 miles to the scenic viewpoint turnoff. Neither says the pullout is westbound only, and neither ever routes a visitor to it eastbound. No transportation department page answering the question was reached in this research, so this page does not tell anybody which side of the freeway to be on.
The practical consequence is worth stating for the reader driving east from Ogden, which is how most people in this county approach it. Plan for the possibility that the viewpoint is on the other carriageway, and be ready to carry on to the next exit and turn round rather than making a decision at speed on an interstate. That is not caution for its own sake: this is a freeway with heavy freight on it, and it is the only high capacity road in or out of Morgan County.
One more thing the survey does not supply. It says nothing about who maintains the pullout, nothing about the interpretive signage beyond a photograph caption noting a gate in the foreground for scale, and nothing at all about the cement plant. Everything on this page about the plant comes from a different agency entirely.
The rock and the plant are two different things and only one of them is a place you can go. The Devil's Slide formation is a roadside viewpoint on a public freeway. The Devil's Slide cement plant is an operating industrial facility at 6055 East Croydon Road, a Title V major source under federal air rules, with no public access published anywhere by anybody. It is a landmark and an employer, not a destination, and nothing on this page should be read as an invitation to go and look at it. The former company village beside it is in the same category: no issuing body reached in this research describes its condition, its population or its status, so this page describes buildings and ownership only and does not repeat the near ghost town phrasing that circulates, including on this site's own Morgan city guide.
The rock
Two walls of limestone standing on end, with the soft rock that used to sit between them washed out.
The Utah Geological Survey describes the formation in plain measurements: two limestone walls about 40 feet high, 25 feet apart, and several hundred feet in length, with softer rock eroded out from between them. That is the whole shape of it, and it is why the name works. The two hard beds are resistant; the soft shaly limestone that was sandwiched between them was not; a hundred million years or so of weather did the rest, and what is left is a chute running down the canyon wall.
The geology behind that is the part worth stopping for, and the survey sets it out in three moves. The rock is the Twin Creek Formation, about 2,700 feet thick, and its sediments formed 170 to 180 million years ago in a shallow sea that covered this part of Utah. About 75 million years ago, folding and faulting during a mountain building episode tilted the Twin Creek layers to a near vertical position. Erosion then exposed them. So the walls are not standing up because something pushed them up out of the ground; they are bedding planes that were laid down flat and then rotated onto their edge, and what a visitor is looking at is the side of a page rather than the top of one.
Two things the survey does not say, and this page will not supply. It does not say who owns the ground the formation sits on. What can be said with a source is the surrounding arithmetic: Morgan County is 93.09 percent privately owned on its own adopted table, and the cement plant a few miles away quarries limestone and sandstone on its own site, so a limestone landform beside a limestone quarry sits in a heavily private landscape. That is context and not a title search. It also does not say when or why the formation acquired its name.
The formation, on the survey's own figures
40 ft
high, on the Utah Geological Survey's measurement of the two walls
25 ft
apart, with the softer rock between them eroded away
2,700 ft
the thickness of the Twin Creek Formation the walls belong to
75 m yrs
since folding and faulting tilted these beds to near vertical
One name, two subjects
A rock formation and a cement plant share a name and share almost nothing else.
This is the distinction that separates a careful description of this place from a careless one, and it is worth making as a table rather than as a paragraph. Every line below comes from the body that publishes it, read on 21 August 2026.
| The formation | The cement plant | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Two parallel limestone walls of the Twin Creek Formation, tilted to near vertical | A Portland cement manufacturing plant with an on site quarry |
| Who documents it | The Utah Geological Survey, in its published GeoSights series | Utah's Division of Air Quality, in permit DAQE-IN100070032-25 of 2 October 2025 |
| Where | A scenic pullout on Interstate 84 near milepost 111 | 6055 East Croydon Road, Morgan, UT 84050 |
| Who runs it | Not published. No body names an owner or a maintainer | Amrize Cement Inc., formerly known as Holcim (US) Inc. |
| Can you visit | Yes, from the pullout, free, any hour | No. No public access of any kind is published |
| How old | Sediments 170 to 180 million years old, tilted about 75 million years ago | Three public bodies give three different starting points: 1907, 1947, and more than 80 years |
| Current status | Standing | Operating, as a Title V major source, with an application in October 2025 to add a new finish mill |
The Utah Geological Survey says nothing about the plant and the Division of Air Quality says nothing about the formation. They are documented by different agencies for different reasons, which is the clearest possible sign that they are two subjects rather than one.
The plant
The permit record settles two questions at once: who runs it, and whether it runs.
Utah's Division of Air Quality issued an Intent to Approve on 2 October 2025, reference DAQE-IN100070032-25, and its opening sentence does more work than any amount of local reporting. Amrize Cement Inc., known formerly as Holcim (US) Inc., owns and operates the Devil's Slide cement manufacturing plant near Morgan, Utah. That is the operator named and the operating status confirmed in one line, by the agency that regulates it, with a date on it. The letter itself was read on 21 August 2026.
The contact block in the same document supplies the plant's own particulars: the source name is Amrize Cement Inc. Devil's Slide Plant, the physical address is 6055 East Croydon Road, Morgan, UT 84050, the mailing address is a corporate one in Chicago, the standard industrial classification is 3241 for hydraulic cement, and the letter records the plant as located in Morgan County. It was copied to the Weber and Morgan health department. That street address appears to be the first first party address for this plant to be printed anywhere on this site.
What the plant does is described in the permit in the agency's own words, and it is the clause tying the plant back to the geology that makes it worth quoting. At the Devil's Slide plant, cement is made when raw materials such as limestone and sandstone, quarried on site, along with iron ore and an alumina source, are proportioned, ground, mixed and then fed into a rotating kiln. The heat of the kiln alters the materials and recombines them into small stones called cement clinker. The clinker is cooled and ground with gypsum into a fine powdered cement, and the final product is stored on site for later packaging and shipping. Limestone quarried on site, in a canyon whose most photographed feature is a limestone landform, is not a coincidence.
The 2025 action itself is a modification to an earlier approval order, to incorporate alternative fuel processing and feed system operations and to include a new finish mill. The plant is classified as a minor modification at a major source, and as a Title V major source, with federal standards applied including the new source performance standards for Portland cement plants and the hazardous air pollutant standards for the Portland cement manufacturing industry. Those are regulatory facts stated as regulatory facts. A company applying to install a new finish mill in October 2025 is a company operating a plant, which is the point for a reader trying to work out whether the landmark on the freeway still has an industry attached to it.
When cement started here, and why no single year is printed
Three public bodies point at three different answers and none of them can be dismissed. The federal historic district nomination for downtown Morgan, prepared for and signed by Utah's own preservation office, records that the Ideal Cement Company organised in 1907 just three and a half miles from downtown Morgan, also adjacent to the railroad, that its lime deposits were mined to make concrete, and that the site continues to produce concrete mixes today. The Utah Division of State History says only that Portland cement has been produced at the Devil's Slide plant for more than 80 years. And the state's own air quality material describes the plant as in operation since 1947, with major modifications made to most of the process during 1996 and 1997.
Those are reconcilable if you read them as describing different things: a company organising in 1907, a plant with an operating record running from 1947, and a state history division rounding. They are not reconcilable into a single founding year, and this page does not attempt one. The line it prints is that cement has been made at Devil's Slide for more than eighty years on the state history division's own wording, that the earliest sourced date for a cement company here is 1907, and that the current plant's record with the state air quality division runs from 1947.
One further note on names, because it costs nothing to get right. The Utah Division of State History's county page still names Holcim as the operator and does not carry a date. The air quality permit names Amrize, formerly Holcim (US) Inc., and is dated 2 October 2025. Where an undated page and a dated permit disagree about who owns a factory, the permit is the operating record. Use Amrize and note Holcim as the former name, which is exactly what the permit itself does.
The river below it
The county calls its own river a blue ribbon fishery and then declines to say where you get in.
The Weber River runs the length of this canyon underneath the freeway and the railway, and the best description of it comes from the county government rather than from any outfitter. Morgan County's own Resource Management Plan, as adopted, calls the Weber a blue ribbon fishery and popular rafting destination and states that the county is divided by the Weber River. A county describing its own river that way in an adopted planning document is a far stronger source than a commercial page saying the same thing.
What no public body publishes is a place to get in. The county names rafting and does not map it. Morgan City's own things to do list includes rafting and river tubing as categories with no locations and no operators attached. No named public put in or take out anywhere near Devil's Slide was located in this research, and so none is printed. That is a real gap rather than an omission: anybody planning to float this river should be arranging access with a commercial operator or a landowner, in a county where 93.09 percent of the ground is private and the river runs through the middle of it.
The same private land arithmetic explains why the canyon looks the way it does from a car. Between the freeway, the railway, the river and the private ground either side, there is very little in Weber Canyon within Morgan County that a member of the public can stop at and walk on. The pullout at the rock formation is one of the few, and that is a large part of why it matters so much to this county's visitor economy.
The rest of the corridor, the freeway, the freight line, the seasonal roads and the commute the whole valley makes down it, is on the corridor page. Two landmarks that circulate with this canyon, the 1,000 Mile Tree and Devil's Gate, are not assigned to a county anywhere on this site, because Weber Canyon runs through both Morgan and Weber counties and no public body reached in this research places either of them.
The details
Getting there
The survey routes visitors to it travelling west in both of its published direction sets, and never routes anyone to it eastbound, but it does not actually state that the pullout is westbound only and no transportation department page answering the question was reached. Treat the direction as unresolved, approach at a sensible speed, and be prepared to run on to the next exit and come back rather than committing to a lane late. Heavy freight uses this road and it is the only high capacity route through the county.
Before you go
- There is no trail, no walk and nothing to climb here. It is a viewpoint, and the ground beyond it has no published ownership.
- The cement plant is a separate site several miles of road away with no public access published. Do not go looking for it.
- Winter is the honest photography season, because the walls stand out against snow and the low sun crosses the canyon rather than sitting over it. That is an observation about the geometry and not a claim from any agency.
- The nearest thing to a facility is the freeway exit at Croydon, which is also the turn for Lost Creek State Park about ten miles north.
Living with it
The most recognisable phrase in the county belongs to a rock, an industry and a village at the same time.
For a household in this valley, Devil's Slide is three things at once and it is worth being clear about which one is in play in any given sentence. It is the landmark everybody points at from the freeway, free and thirty seconds off the road. It is an operating cement works with a federal air permit classification and a 2025 application to add plant. And it is the name of a former company village beside that works. Those three share a phrase and nothing else, and conflating them is how most descriptions of this county go wrong.
The company village is the one this page says least about, deliberately. No issuing body reached in this research describes its condition, its population or its status, so nothing here calls it anything. The compliance rule on this site is that a page describes buildings and ownership and never the people who lived somewhere, and in this case the shortage of sources and the rule point the same way. If a reader wants that history properly, the body holding it is the county historical society in the old railway depot, whose archive is open to the public five days a week.
The plant is the part that matters for an address. It is an industrial facility with real regulatory standing at the eastern end of a narrow canyon, on the same corridor as the freeway and the freight line, and it has been there in one form or another for a very long time. That is a neutral fact and it belongs on a buyer's list alongside the freight line and the interstate rather than in an argument. Anybody weighing the Croydon end of this county should look at where the plant sits relative to a specific address, and should get that from the county recorder and the parcel map rather than from any page.
And the rock is just good. It costs nothing, it takes a quarter of an hour, the geology is published by the state in plain language, and it is the one thing in Morgan County that a stranger driving through has heard of. In a county where the wildlife management area cannot legally be entered and the state parks hold under one percent of the ground, a free roadside landmark carries more weight than it would anywhere else.
A shallow sea, then a mountain range folding it onto its edge, then a hundred million years of weather taking the soft layer out from between two hard ones. The result is visible at seventy miles an hour.
Keep reading
The rest of Morgan County on The Local.
The reservoir
East Canyon
Four different bodies own a piece of one reservoir, and the fee table proves it.
Read the guideThe other reservoir
Lost Creek
A state park that exists because a 2021 statute told the division to go and ask.
Read the guideSouth of town
Round Valley
Eighteen holes on private ground, and 3,717 public acres nobody can get into.
Read the guideThe corridor
Weber Canyon and the railroad
One freeway, one freight line, no passenger stop, four roads in 609 square miles.
Read the guideIn town
The depot and the fairgrounds
A 1926 depot facing the transcontinental line, and eight days of fair in July.
Read the guideMoving here
The unincorporated two thirds
Two thirds of this county lives where the city utility package stops at the line.
Read the guideThe whole set
Morgan, in full
A county of 13,341 with one incorporated city and 93 percent of its ground in private hands.
Open the companionQuick answers
Devil's Slide, answered.
In Weber Canyon in Morgan County, seen from a scenic pullout on Interstate 84 east of Morgan. The Utah Geological Survey gives the viewpoint as after milepost 110 in one of its route descriptions and just after milepost 111 in the other, on the same published page, so near milepost 111 is the honest answer and no single exact milepost should be treated as certain. The survey publishes directions from Salt Lake City, by Interstate 80 east 11.3 miles to exit 134 then north 27.7 miles on SR-65 to Henefer then west to Interstate 84, and from Farmington, by US-89 north 10.7 miles then about 23 miles on Interstate 84.
Limestone of the Twin Creek Formation, which the Utah Geological Survey describes as about 2,700 feet thick and formed in a shallow sea that covered this area 170 to 180 million years ago. About 75 million years ago, folding and faulting during a mountain building episode tilted the layers to a near vertical position, and erosion then exposed them and removed the softer rock that lay between the two hard beds. What is left is two parallel walls about 40 feet high and 25 feet apart running several hundred feet, with a chute between them. The visitor is looking at bedding planes on their edge.
There is a scenic pullout on Interstate 84 and the direction question is genuinely unresolved. The Utah Geological Survey's two published route descriptions both arrive at the viewpoint travelling west, and neither of them ever routes a visitor to it eastbound, but the survey never states that the pullout is westbound only and no transportation department page answering the question was reached in this research. Approach at a sensible speed, expect the possibility that it is on the other carriageway, and be prepared to continue to the next exit and turn round rather than making a late decision on a freeway carrying heavy freight.
Yes. Utah's Division of Air Quality issued an Intent to Approve dated 2 October 2025, reference DAQE-IN100070032-25, which states that Amrize Cement Inc., formerly known as Holcim (US) Inc., owns and operates the Devil's Slide cement manufacturing plant near Morgan, Utah. The permit action itself is a modification to incorporate alternative fuel processing and feed system operations and to include a new finish mill, which is not an application a closed plant makes. The plant's physical address is 6055 East Croydon Road, Morgan, UT 84050, and it is classified as a Title V major source under federal air rules.
Amrize Cement Inc., which the state permit records as formerly known as Holcim (US) Inc. The Utah Division of State History's Morgan County page still names Holcim and carries no date; the Division of Air Quality's letter names Amrize and is dated 2 October 2025. Where an undated page and a dated permit disagree about who owns a factory, the permit is the operating record, so this site uses Amrize and notes Holcim as the former name, which is exactly what the permit does itself. No public body publishes an employment figure for the plant, so none appears anywhere on this site.
Three public bodies give three different answers and no single founding year is printed here. The federal historic district nomination for downtown Morgan, signed by Utah's preservation office, records that the Ideal Cement Company organised in 1907 just three and a half miles from downtown Morgan, beside the railroad, and that the site continues to produce concrete mixes today. The Utah Division of State History says Portland cement has been produced at the plant for more than 80 years. Utah air quality material describes the plant as in operation since 1947 with major modifications to most of the process during 1996 and 1997. All three are defensible and they answer different questions.
No public access is published for either. The plant is an operating industrial facility with a federal major source classification and nothing on any public page invites a visitor. The former company village beside it is not described by any issuing body reached in this research: no condition, no population, no status. This site therefore says nothing about what stands there now, and does not repeat the near ghost town phrasing that circulates, including on its own Morgan city guide. The body most likely to hold that history properly is the Morgan County Historical Society, which keeps an archive open to the public in the old railway depot in town.
No, and that is a fair description rather than a criticism. There is no trail, no walk, no interpretive centre and nothing to climb, and the ground beyond the pullout has no published ownership at all. The Utah Geological Survey says nothing about who maintains the pullout and nothing about the content of any signage beyond a photograph caption. Ten to fifteen minutes covers the whole stop. In a county where the state parks hold under one percent of the ground and the one wildlife management area cannot legally be entered, a free roadside landmark counts for more than it would elsewhere.
The county says the river is worth it and then does not say where to get in. Morgan County's own adopted Resource Management Plan calls the Weber a blue ribbon fishery and popular rafting destination and states that the county is divided by the Weber River. Morgan City's things to do list includes rafting and river tubing as categories with no locations and no operators. No named public put in or take out anywhere in this county was located in this research, so none is printed. In a county that is 93.09 percent private, river access is a question for a commercial operator or a landowner rather than for a map.
Fifteen minutes off the freeway for the one thing in this county everybody has heard of.
Devil's Slide is the easiest introduction Morgan County has, and it is also a useful test of how a page treats this place. A description that runs the rock and the cement works together, or that tells you confidently which milepost and which direction, is not reading the sources. If you are weighing an address at the eastern end of this valley, the plant, the freight line and the freeway are all part of the same corridor and all three deserve a look on the parcel map before an offer. Tell me which addresses are in play and I will introduce you to a Weber and Morgan partner agent who can drive them with you, and stay on the file for the financing side.
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.