City Riverdale, Weber County
Nine thousand residents, 8,761 jobs, three parks and two interstate freeways on four and a half square miles
Riverdale, a small city doing a very large amount of somebody else's business.
Riverdale holds about 8,990 people on 4.6 square miles of southern Weber County, and the state's labour department counts 8,761 jobs inside the same limits. Nearly all of them sit on one road. The city's adopted budget takes close to five dollars of sales tax for every dollar of property tax, and yet the city publishes almost nothing about the corridor that produces it while documenting a river reach that produces nothing at all. Six pages on the city itself, and an honest handover to the one region subject that genuinely begins at this city's line.
I hold my licence at the opposite end of the state and my own market is three hundred miles south of this river, so these pages are researched rather than lived. What is on them was taken where it is issued: Riverdale City's own trails, parks, events, community centre, fire, public works and redevelopment pages, and the FY 2026 final budget the city adopted and published as a document; the transportation department's live project file for the bridge work over 4400 South and its release on the 5600 South interchange; the Trails Foundation of Northern Utah for the trail records; the state labour department's county jobs table; the State Board of Education's October enrollment file; the State Tax Commission's rate chart; the Census Bureau's boundary geocoder and its American Community Survey; the Weber County Library System's own list of branches; and the aerospace museum's operator for its own address and hours. Every figure carries the day it was read. A Weber and Morgan partner agent takes the ground level work.
The short answer
Riverdale is a city of about nine thousand people on 4.6 square miles in southern Weber County, and the number that explains it is the other one: the state's labour department counts 8,761 jobs inside those limits. Almost all of them sit on one road. The city's adopted budget for 2025-26 takes $8,371,887 in general sales tax against $1,740,993 in current year general property tax, which is close to five to one. Everything else here is small and specific: three parks, no dog park, one school, no library branch, a paved reach of the Weber River with a pump track beside the car park, and a Fourth of July that starts with a cannon at six in the morning. Checked 22 August 2026.
The live question
How many people live in Riverdale, when three public bodies print three different answers?
Three figures are current, all three come from bodies entitled to issue them, and they do not agree. The 2020 census counted 9,343. The Utah Population Committee's estimate for 1 July 2025, released in May 2026, is 8,990, which is 353 fewer and a fall of 3.8 percent since the census. Riverdale City's own About page prints 8,727, lower again, undated, alongside a density of about 1,898.8 people per square mile that is arithmetically consistent with its own figure over its own 4.6 square miles. A fourth number floats around at 9,279 and is the Census Bureau's five year survey estimate pooled across 2020 to 2024, which measures a five year average rather than a year and should never be set beside the other three.
The useful way to hold it is that the state figure is the one to compare cities with, the city figure is the one the city believes, and the census count is a different instrument from either. What all three agree on is direction. Riverdale is smaller than it was in 2020, and on the state's own May 2026 numbers it is the steepest five year percentage fall of any city on the Weber County roster. That is a number and nothing more; nothing on this companion attributes it to anybody, because a population estimate says nothing whatever about the people counted in it.
It also sits oddly against the other headline number, and the oddness is the point. The state labour department's county table for data year 2023 puts 8,761 average jobs in Riverdale, of which 3,139 are in trade and transport and 2,239 in financial activities, with other sectors suppressed at the source. Set that against a 2025 population of 8,990 and the ratio is close to one job for every resident. Riverdale is the third largest job centre in Weber County on its ninth largest population, behind only Ogden and Roy. The page on the road works through what that means and where the city's own silence about it starts.
The last thing worth settling here is the boundary, because this is a city where a postal address will mislead you twice in one afternoon. Riverdale shares postcode 84405 with Washington Terrace, South Ogden and part of Ogden. The Newgate Mall, which carries a Riverdale postcode, sits on a parcel the federal boundary layer places inside Ogden. Ogden Regional Medical Center, which prints an Ogden mailing address, sits on a parcel inside Washington Terrace. And the aerospace museum next to the base is the reverse case: it prints a Hill Air Force Base postcode and the city says it is inside the Riverdale line. Take the postcode off the table before you conclude anything about jurisdiction here.
Start here
Two interstates, one river and one road, on four and a half square miles that hold a job for nearly every resident.
Riverdale states its own dimensions and they are worth taking from the city rather than from anywhere else. Its About page gives 4.6 square miles, an elevation range of 4,320 to 4,670 feet across the city rather than a single point, a settlement date of 1850, incorporation as a town on 4 March 1946 and city status on 9 July 1956. It also makes exactly one commercial claim about itself: that Riverdale Road remains one of the busiest roads in northern Utah, and that two interstate freeways, I-15 and I-84, traverse the city. For a place this size that second sentence is the unusual one, and it is the reason the city has three named road projects running through it in the same year.
What the city does not do is describe its own retail. There is no economic development page, no list of shopping centres, no anchor tenant, no statement about sales tax revenue and no promotional description of the corridor anywhere on the site. The business section carries licences, permits, inspections, bids and a directory. The redevelopment agency page names two project areas and puts the plans behind document links. That absence is not a gap in the research; it is a finding, and it is why the road page here is built on the state labour department, the transport department, the regional council and the city's own adopted budget rather than on any prose the city wrote.
The river is the mirror image. Riverdale publishes more about its trail than any other city on the corridor: a conduct policy naming loose dogs and fast bicycles, an animal control officer who issues citations for it, a described set of car parks with facilities at each, an angler access given by cross street, and a pump track opened in 2015 at the lot behind city hall. It publishes almost nothing about the road that pays for all of it. A city that documents its recreation and stays silent about its economy is a slightly strange thing, and it is the most useful single observation anybody can carry into a Riverdale search.
Riverdale at a glance
8,990
people at the state's 1 July 2025 estimate, against 9,343 at the 2020 census and 8,727 on the city's own page
8,761
jobs inside the city on the state labour department's 2023 county table, roughly one for every resident
4.6 sq mi
of city, crossed by two interstate freeways, on the city's own statement of its area
3
city parks, one school, no library branch and no dog park inside the limits
The column
Stringtown in 1850, a town in 1946, a city in 1956, and a hundred thousand vehicles a day at the interchange nobody calls Riverdale's.
Riverdale dates its own turning points to the day where it can, which is more than most cities its size manage, and every other row below carries the body that issued it. Where two bodies disagree, both appear and the row says which is which. Nothing in the column comes from anywhere but the body that published it.
| When | What happened | Who publishes it | Why it still matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1850 | James Graham and his sons George and Robert settle the ground, with Elisha Lane, William Farley, Rufus Allen, Adam Fife and Alexander Patterson among the first farmers | Riverdale City's About page | The city names the people and the year and stops there. It does not say who named the place Riverdale or when, so no naming story appears on this companion |
| Before Riverdale | The settlement is called Stringtown, because the early homes are strung along a single road and the Weber River, then Thompson's Settlement, then Union | Riverdale City | Three names before the current one, and the current one describes the geography exactly. Stringtown is also the most accurate description of the city's shape that anybody has written down |
| 1853 | A grist mill is built, with a saw mill among the other early industries | Riverdale City | The city names the year and the mills and no builder. The founder's name and the river bank in circulation elsewhere are unsourced at the city and are not printed here |
| 1878 and 1900 | The settlement counts 211 people, then 282 | Riverdale City | Two published historic counts, which is unusual, and they set the scale: this was a farming string of houses for its first century |
| 4 March 1946 | Riverdale is incorporated as a town | Riverdale City | An exact date, which closes the question the city guide on this site left open with a note asking somebody to verify the day |
| 9 July 1956 | Riverdale achieves city status | Riverdale City | The second exact date. Ten years and four months between the two, which is a normal Utah sequence and is worth having right |
| 2015 | A pump track opens at the trailhead car park south of the Civic Center | Riverdale City's parks page | The one asset on this stretch of river that no trail organisation carries. It is the city's, not the corridor's, and it is the strongest reason to start a river visit at city hall |
| Summer 2023 to 17 August 2026 | The transportation department rebuilds the I-15 interchange at 5600 South as a single point urban interchange, widening the cross street, adding a walking and cycling route and carrying a rail trail over it on a new bridge | Utah Department of Transportation news release, 17 August 2026 | The department's own regional director framed the finished project as connecting Roy, Riverdale and Hill Air Force Base, and puts traffic in the area at about 100,000 vehicles a day. The interchange parcels tested sit in Roy |
| 11 August 2025 to fall 2026 | Three bridges are replaced where I-84 and I-15 cross 4400 South, with the 4400 South bridge over I-15 reopened on 16 June 2026 | Utah Department of Transportation project file, read 22 August 2026 | The only one of the three road projects that is physically inside this city, and the only one a resident is currently driving through. Its own project name is I-84 and 4400 South, Riverdale, Bridge Work |
| Adopted June 2025, for 2025-26 | The city budgets $8,371,887 of general sales tax against $1,740,993 of current year general property tax, and $380,000 of capital for parks and trails | Riverdale City FY 2026 Final Budget | The clearest published statement of what the road does for the city, in the city's own adopted numbers rather than in a claim somebody repeated |
| 2026 season | The splash pad at Riverdale Park closes every Thursday for water conservation, and the city publishes a Weber Basin Water notice of a 20 percent restriction in its supply | Riverdale City parks and public works pages | A dated, weekly, checkable consequence of a drought, published by the city that owns the tap. Nothing in general circulation about this city carries it |
| 22 August 2026 | No closure is published on the Riverdale reach of the river trail by the city or by the trail organisation | Riverdale City and the Trails Foundation of Northern Utah | An absence with a date on it, which is the most perishable line in this column and the one worth re-checking first |
Every row names the body that publishes it and every one of those bodies was read on 22 August 2026, except the population estimate, which comes from the Utah Population Committee's release for 1 July 2025, and the jobs figure, which is the state labour department's data year 2023. What a house here is worth this month, and what the market is doing, belong to this site's practical Riverdale city guide rather than to a companion.
Two things fall out of that column. The first is that this city's best current document is its budget. Riverdale publishes a full adopted budget with account numbers and the finance officer's own notes attached to the lines, and those notes name projects the web pages never mention: a $300,000 playground at Golden Spike Park, an outdoor classroom, a car park improvement, a $1.7 million roundabout on 1050 West, and a heavy rescue programme the county helps fund. Anybody researching this city seriously should open the budget before the news page. The page on the parks takes the capital line apart.
The second is that Riverdale keeps more of its own services than a city of nine thousand usually does, and buys exactly one thing from a neighbour. It runs its own fire department with ambulance service at the advanced emergency medical technician level and a heavy rescue capability that serves two counties. It runs its own police department. It bills its own culinary water, sewer collection, garbage and recycling. What it does not have is a swimming pool, so the city buys pool time in Roy and carries a budget line named for the complex it buys it from. The page on moving here sets out who does what.
The region
One of the six Weber and Morgan subjects starts at this city's line, and the other five are drives rather than claims.
Weber and Morgan carry six subjects written once for all fourteen cities instead of fourteen times over. A canyon, two ski resorts, two reservoirs, two river trails, the main street downtown and the bench above Ogden. Riverdale sits on exactly one of them, and it sits at its southern end, which is the door the corridor page has been holding open. The other five are reached from here rather than owned here.
The corridor
The Ogden and Weber river parkways
The whole ten mile route north from this city's south end, with its four owners and its two mileages.
Read the guideFive miles north
Historic 25th Street
The listed historic district, the buildings and their dates, the parking that now costs, and the walk.
Read the guideAll six
Weber and Morgan on The Local
Two counties, fourteen cities and six shared subjects, gathered on one hub page.
The region hubThe other four have no Riverdale address, and the reason in each case is a drive rather than an argument. Ogden Canyon opens off a road that starts several miles north of here and this city has no ground on it, so the canyon guide is a plan from rather than a claim. Snowbasin and Powder Mountain are reached through that canyon or over a state route into the next valley, and the resorts guide compares them properly. Pineview and Causey sit on the Ogden River above the canyon mouth, a different drainage from the Weber entirely, on the reservoirs guide. And the shoreline trail and the peak above it climb out of Ogden, North Ogden and Pleasant View, so the bench guide is somewhere a Riverdale household drives to. The one that starts here is the river, and it starts at the county line at the south end of this city.
If you only have one morning
Park behind city hall, ride the pump track, walk the river and finish at the playground.
First thing
The lot behind city hall
The trailhead car park south of the Civic Center holds the city's pump track, opened in 2015 and free, and puts you straight onto the paved reach.
The river pageThen
North to the seam
Walk or ride to Parker Drive, where Riverdale calls the lot its north trailhead and the trail organisation calls the same lot the south end of Ogden's reach.
The river pageMid morning
Riverdale Park
The city's largest park sits at that same address, with a splash pad on a published drought schedule and pavilions that book from 1 May.
The parks pageOr instead
Read the road
Twenty minutes with the county jobs table and the city budget explains more about Riverdale than an hour on the corridor itself.
The road pageLiving with it
A city that keeps its own fire engine, buys its pool time next door, and lives on a road it barely mentions.
A Riverdale address asks a short list of questions and almost none of them is about scenery. How close the property sits to the corridor, because that is the trade the whole city is built on. Whether it sits on the low ground toward the river, because that is where a flood map question belongs and the city itself publishes no flood history at all. Which of the three road projects currently touches the daily route, because one of them is live inside the city until the autumn. Whether the household needs a swimming pool, a library branch or a dog park, because the city has none of the three and each answer is in a different neighbouring city. And what the planning department's overlay says about the parcel, because the city took part in the compatible use planning around the installation and the department, not the base, holds the answer for any given address.
What is genuinely good here is easy to name. A city this size that still runs its own fire department, with ambulance service at the advanced emergency medical technician level and a heavy rescue capability the county part funds as a regional resource, has kept something most suburbs contract out. The everyday shopping and services are inside the city rather than a drive from it, which is the practical half of what people mean by convenient. The Community Center on Parker Drive is open six in the morning until nine at night, Monday to Saturday, for a published drop in rate. And there is a paved river reach with a car park and a pump track five minutes from most addresses, which is a genuinely uncommon thing to have inside four and a half square miles.
What is genuinely hard is equally plain. There is no library branch, no municipal pool, no commuter rail platform and no dog park inside the limits. There is one school in the city and the secondary schools are in Washington Terrace. The city publishes so little about its own commercial life that a buyer researching the corridor has to go to the state and the county for it. And the city was under a published water restriction as of 22 August 2026, with a splash pad closed one day a week to match. The page on moving here is the one to read before an offer, because it is the page about who to call for what.
Two of the outdoor assets people associate with Riverdale are in other cities, and one of them does not exist at all. The trailhead names in general circulation for this city are wrong in both directions. There is no Frisbee Park in Riverdale: the city publishes three parks and none of them carries that name, and it appears in no county or state record located on 22 August 2026. Adams Avenue is not a Riverdale trailhead either; the name belongs to a crossing at the far end of South Weber, in Davis County, one city upstream. And the kayak park on the Weber River is Ogden City's facility on Exchange Road, catalogued by the national whitewater body under Ogden's name and rebuilt in February 2022; Riverdale City publishes no kayak park anywhere. What Riverdale does publish, and what nobody repeats, is the pump track at the trailhead lot behind city hall.
A city that writes down its leash rule and says nothing at all about the road that pays for the leash rule is telling you where it thinks its ordinary life happens.
The Riverdale companion
Six pages, and every one of them rests on something a public body actually published.
Everything The Local has written about Riverdale: the city's own reach of the Weber River and the pump track no trail record carries, the road that holds 8,761 jobs in a city of nine thousand, the Fourth of July the city runs itself with a cannon at six in the morning, three parks with a drought schedule and a playground in the adopted budget, the crossing of two interstates and the fence line with a federal installation this city does not contain, and what an address here actually asks of a household.
Quick answers
Riverdale, answered.
Three bodies publish three current figures. The 2020 census counted 9,343. The Utah Population Committee's estimate for 1 July 2025, released in May 2026, is 8,990, which is 353 fewer and a fall of 3.8 percent since the census. Riverdale City's own About page prints 8,727 without a date. A fourth number, 9,279, is the Census Bureau's five year survey estimate pooled over 2020 to 2024 and measures a five year average rather than a single year, so it should never be set beside the other three. Use the state figure to compare cities and label whichever one you print.
Riverdale City states 4.6 square miles, an elevation range of 4,320 to 4,670 feet across the city rather than a single point, and a position twenty two miles north of the state capital. It sits in southern Weber County on the north bank of the Weber River, with Ogden to the north, South Ogden and Washington Terrace to the east, Roy and West Haven to the west, and the Davis County line and South Weber to the south east. City hall is the Civic Center at 4600 South Weber River Drive, open eight until five Monday to Friday, on 801-394-5541.
Because of one road. The Utah Department of Workforce Services county table for data year 2023 records 8,761 average jobs in Riverdale, including 3,139 in trade and transport and 2,239 in financial activities, with other sectors suppressed in the source table so they do not sum to the total. Against a 2025 population estimate of 8,990 that is close to one job for every resident, and it makes Riverdale the third largest job centre in Weber County behind Ogden and Roy while ranking ninth by population. That is a count of jobs and nothing else.
No. The mall at 3651 Wall Avenue carries the 84405 postcode, which is Riverdale's, but the parcel resolves to Ogden city on the Census Bureau's boundary layer, checked 22 August 2026. This is the cleanest illustration in northern Utah of a rule worth carrying into any search here: a mailing address is not a jurisdiction. The same postcode is shared by Riverdale, Washington Terrace, South Ogden and part of Ogden, and the boundary layer disagrees with the postal city more often than not along this stretch of the valley.
Yes to both, and the fire side is the unusual one. Riverdale keeps a municipal fire service on Parker Drive rather than contracting it out, and its adopted budget carries a note recording county money for a heavy rescue programme, which is how a place of nine thousand ends up holding a capability that answers into Davis County as well as its own. The department's published description also covers ambulance work at the advanced emergency medical technician level. Policing is municipal too, with after hours dispatch given as 801-395-8221, although every web address tried for that department returned a not found error on 22 August 2026, so no station address, chief or staffing figure appears anywhere on this companion.
No, and the name corresponds to nothing in any public record. The city's park list runs to three entries and stops: a large one on Parker Drive, a ball field park at Golden Spike and a small neighbourhood park on the east side. Nothing under a fourth name turns up in the city's adopted budget or in any county or state record located on 22 August 2026. The name is nonetheless printed three separate times on this site's own practical city guide, which is corrected here. Adams Avenue is not an access point in this city either: that name belongs to a crossing at the far end of South Weber, one county to the south.
One building stands inside the city limits and the rest of a household's twelve years happens in another municipality. The city belongs to Weber School District, the county district rather than Ogden City's, and its one in city school is a kindergarten to grade six building with 378 pupils on the state's October 2025 count. Its name is printed two ways, as Riverdale School by the state and the district and as Riverdale Elementary in common use, and an enrollment citation should use the first. Both secondary schools that most addresses here feed toward stand on parcels inside Washington Terrace while carrying Ogden postal addresses. This site does not rate schools and the district runs the boundary tool.
Neither. The Weber County Library System publishes five branches and none of them is inside Riverdale; the nearest are the Pleasant Valley Branch on Adams Avenue and the Southwest Branch at 2039 W 4000 S in Roy, and all five keep the same hours. There is no municipal pool either. The city buys pool access from its neighbour and its adopted budget carries a line named for the Roy complex, which is also where the swim night in its own Fourth of July programme is held. There is likewise no dog park anywhere in the city's three parks or in its budget.
The combined rate is 7.45 percent, from the Utah State Tax Commission's combined sales and use tax chart effective for the first quarter of 2026, read 22 August 2026. The Weber County countywide rate on the same chart is 7.25 percent. The Commission publishes the rate as a long list of component codes rather than as a simple four part split, and notably it shows the city or town option rate at zero for Riverdale, which contradicts the four part breakdown printed on this site's practical city guide. The total is right; the breakdown beside it is not, so this companion prints the total only.
Six pages on a city that documents its river and stays quiet about its road.
Riverdale asks a shorter list of questions than most northern Utah addresses and a stranger one. How much corridor you actually want at the end of the street, because the whole city is built on that trade. Whether the parcel sits low toward the river bottoms, because the city publishes no flood history of its own and the federal map is the only answer. Which of the three current road projects crosses the daily route, because one of them is live inside the city into the autumn. What the planning department holds as an overlay on the parcel, because the city took part in the compatible use planning around the installation on its southern fence line and the department, not the base, answers for a specific address. And whether a household needs a pool, a library branch or a dog park, because Riverdale has none of the three and each answer lives in a different neighbouring city. Tell me what you are weighing and I will introduce you to a Weber and Morgan partner agent who works these streets, 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.