Moving here Riverdale
Its own fire engine, its own police force and its own water main, and no pool, library branch or dog park inside the line
Moving to Riverdale, where the city keeps the fire engine and buys the swimming.
Riverdale is a small city that has kept more of its own services than most places its size. It runs its own fire department, with ambulance service at the advanced emergency medical technician level and a heavy rescue capability the county part funds for two counties, its own police department, and its own culinary water, sewer collection, garbage and recycling on one city bill. What it does not run is a swimming pool, a library branch or a dog park, and it holds one school inside its limits with the secondary schools in Washington Terrace. Three public bodies publish three different population figures for it and all three are falling.
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
A Riverdale address buys an unusually complete small city. Riverdale 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 for two counties. It runs its own police department. It bills its own culinary water, sewer collection, garbage and recycling, with sewer treatment handled by the Central Weber Sewer Improvement District. What it does not have is a swimming pool, a library branch or a dog park, and it has exactly one school inside its limits. The Census Bureau's five year survey puts the median value of an owner occupied home here at $395,200. Checked 22 August 2026.
The live question
Who do you actually call, in a city that runs its own fire engine and buys its pool time?
Riverdale keeps more of its own services than most cities of nine thousand people, which makes the list of numbers shorter than usual rather than longer. The city itself runs the fire department, the police department, public works, parks, recreation and the ordinary municipal offices, and one switchboard on 801-394-5541 reaches the civic side of all of it. Public works oversees streets, water, sewer, garbage and parks maintenance under an administrator the city names, and the recreation side runs out of the building on Parker Drive on its own number, 801-621-6084.
The fire department is the part worth reading twice. It sits at 4334 South Parker Drive on 801-394-7481 for non emergencies, and the city describes fire suppression, ambulance service at the advanced emergency medical technician level, fire prevention, commercial inspections and public education, around the clock. It works inside the mutual aid system with the surrounding Weber County departments and provides heavy rescue as a regional resource for Weber and Davis counties, which the adopted budget confirms from the money side with a note about county funding for the heavy rescue programme. What the city does not publish is its staffing model, so no crew figure appears here.
What Riverdale buys rather than runs is short and specific. Sewer treatment is the Central Weber Sewer Improvement District's, and the city's own budget records passing through a district increase of four and two thirds percent on the sewer line, which is how a resident learns about it. Pool access is bought from the neighbouring city, with a charges for services account named for the complex. Library service is the county system's and no branch is inside the city. Secondary schooling is in Washington Terrace. Each of those has a different answer and each answer is a different body.
The one thing nobody could answer in this research is where the water itself comes from. Riverdale bills culinary water and publishes a wholesaler's restriction notice, and it publishes nothing on any page reached on 22 August 2026 about whether its supply is its own wells, purchased water, or both. That is a real gap for a household weighing an address in a drought year, and the route to closing it is the public works counter rather than any page.
Who runs what
A short list of bodies for a small city, and only three of them sit outside the city line.
The whole service map for a Riverdale address in one place, with the body named and a published point of contact where one exists. Read at the city, in the city's adopted FY 2026 final budget, at the county library system and at the state on 22 August 2026.
| The service | The body | Where it sits | What to know |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fire, rescue and ambulance | Riverdale Fire Department | 4334 South Parker Drive, on 801-394-7481 for non emergencies | The city runs its own, with ambulance service at the advanced emergency medical technician level and heavy rescue as a regional resource for Weber and Davis counties, part funded by the county. The staffing model is not published |
| Police | Riverdale City Police Department | The city runs its own; after hours dispatch is published as 801-395-8221 | The department's own web pages returned a not found error on every address tried on 22 August 2026, so no station address, chief or staffing figure is printed here. The budget carries a small grant line and a school resource officer reimbursement |
| Culinary water, sewer collection, garbage and recycling | Riverdale City, billed by the city | Public works, reached through the city switchboard on 801-394-5541 | One city bill for four services. The city's own water source, whether wells or purchased supply, is not published on any page reached on 22 August 2026 |
| Sewer treatment | Central Weber Sewer Improvement District | Outside the city | The city collects and the district treats. Riverdale's adopted budget records passing through a district increase of four and two thirds percent on its own sewer revenue line |
| Schools | Weber School District, the county district | District offices outside the city | One school sits inside Riverdale. Secondary schooling runs to two schools in Washington Terrace. The district is separate from the Ogden City School District next door and the district's boundary tool is the only authority on which building an address feeds |
| Library | Weber County Library System | No branch inside Riverdale. The nearest published branches are the Pleasant Valley Branch on Adams Avenue and the Southwest Branch at 2039 W 4000 S in Roy | The system publishes five branches with identical hours: Sunday one until five from September to May, Monday to Thursday ten until nine, Friday and Saturday ten until six |
| Swimming | The Roy Aquatic Center, in the neighbouring city | Outside the city | There is no municipal pool in Riverdale. The city's adopted budget carries a charges for services account named for the Roy complex, and its own Fourth of July swim night is held there |
| Recreation and community programmes | Riverdale City Community Center | 4360 S. Parker Drive, on 801-621-6084 | Full size gymnasium, exercise room with ten machines, two meeting rooms, a kitchen and a game room, six in the morning until nine at night, Monday to Saturday. It is also the pavilion booking office; the city no longer takes telephone reservations |
| Planning and land use | Riverdale City | City hall, 4600 South Weber River Drive | The city links a general plan and zoning map through its building inspections page and the address tried returned a not found error, so no adoption date, ordinance number or land use posture is stated here. Its municipal code is hosted off site and refused every attempt |
Read at riverdaleutah.gov and in the city's adopted FY 2026 final budget, at the Weber County Library System's own list of locations, and at the Utah State Board of Education, all on 22 August 2026. Where a row says something was not obtained, the page for it returned an error or a not found response on that date and nothing is filled in from elsewhere. No rate, fee or charge is printed here for any of these bodies beyond the ones the city itself publishes.
Two lines in that table are worth reading twice. The first is the fire department, because a city of nine thousand running its own service with advanced emergency medical technician ambulance cover and a heavy rescue capability that answers across a county line is genuinely unusual, and it is the city's own published description rather than an assessment. The second is the library, because there is no branch here at all and the two nearest are in other cities, which is the sort of thing a household with school age children notices in the second month rather than the first.
The pattern across the whole table is that Riverdale keeps the emergency and the utility side and buys the leisure and the reference side. That is a coherent set of choices rather than a set of gaps, and it produces a short list of telephone numbers: the city for anything municipal, the recreation building for anything to book, the county for the library, the district for what happens to the sewage, and the neighbouring city for the pool.
The details
Getting there
The Civic Center sits at the south end of the city on a street named for the river, with the trailhead car park and the city's pump track behind it. Everything else civic is at the other end of the city on Parker Drive. Between the two runs the city's own reach of the Weber River, which is the most pleasant way to travel between a household's two most likely municipal errands.
Before you go
- The city's own web pages for the police department and the general plan both returned a not found error on 22 August 2026, and its municipal code is hosted off site at an address that refused every attempt, so several ordinary civic questions here are a phone call rather than a lookup.
- The city bills culinary water, sewer collection, garbage and recycling itself, and the sewer treatment behind it belongs to a district whose rate change the city passes through.
- There is a published notice that trees may no longer be planted in the strip between the pavement and the kerb, which is a small live rule and exactly the sort of thing a new owner trips over.
- Riverdale describes itself as a Healthy Utah Community, recognised by Get Healthy Utah and the Utah League of Cities and Towns.
The school and the numbers
One school inside the city, and two of the three population figures are falling.
Riverdale sits in the Weber School District, the county district, which is separate from the Ogden City School District next door. Exactly one school stands inside the city limits, and its name is worth getting right because two forms are in use. The Utah State Board of Education's October 2025 fall enrollment file and the district both print it as Riverdale School, kindergarten through grade six, at 1160 W 4400 S on an Ogden mailing address and a Riverdale parcel, with 378 students. The elementary form of the name is in common use, including on this site's own practical city guide, and the enrollment citation should use the state's name. A separate federal record gives 390 students for the previous school year, which is a different year rather than a contradiction and should never be printed alongside the state figure without both years attached.
Secondary schooling leaves the city. The junior high and the high school most Riverdale addresses feed toward, T.H. Bell Jr High with 531 students and Bonneville High with 1,351, both stand on parcels inside Washington Terrace, and both print Ogden mailing addresses. That is three schools, three postal cities and two municipalities for one household's twelve years, which is a good illustration of why the postcode settles nothing here. Nothing else is stated about any of these schools on this page: no rating, no quality claim and no breakdown of any kind, even though the source file carries one. The district runs the boundary tool and is the only authority on which building a given address feeds.
On the numbers a household actually uses, the census survey puts the median value of an owner occupied home in Riverdale city at $395,200 on the 2020-2024 five year estimates, with a margin of error of plus or minus $31,042, which is about eight percent of the estimate. Weber County's equivalent figure on the same survey is $426,700, so Riverdale sits about seven percent below its county. Both are survey estimates of what owners report their homes are worth rather than records of what anything sold for, and they are comparable to each other and to nothing else. What sold, for how much, and what the market is doing this month is the subject of this site's practical Riverdale city guide instead.
The population line is the one people get wrong, and it is worth carrying all three figures. The 2020 census counted 9,343. The Utah Population Committee estimates 8,990 for 1 July 2025, a fall of 3.8 percent since the census. Riverdale City's own About page prints 8,727, alongside a density of about 1,898.8 people per square mile that is consistent with its own count over its own area. Whichever you print, label it, and never mix any of them with the census survey's pooled 9,279, which measures a five year average.
Riverdale, in the numbers a household uses
$395,200
median value of owner occupied housing, U.S. Census ACS 2020-2024, plus or minus $31,042
378
students at the one school inside the city, on the state's October 2025 enrollment file
7.45%
combined sales tax at the State Tax Commission, on the chart effective for the first quarter of 2026
4,320 to 4,670 ft
the elevation range across the city, as the city itself publishes it
The water and the paperwork
A wholesaler's restriction with no end date, a code the public cannot open, and a plan nobody could read.
The live civic fact in Riverdale is water. The city states, across its business and public works pages, that Weber Basin Water notified it of a 20 percent restriction in its water supply, and publishes no start date, no end date and no ordinance alongside that statement. The visible consequence is at the main park, where the splash pad is closed every Thursday under the city's own 2026 schedule for water conservation. What is not published anywhere is where Riverdale's culinary water actually comes from: whether it draws its own wells, buys wholesale, or does both. For a household weighing an address during a drought, that is the single most useful unanswered question about this city and the public works counter is the route to it.
The second civic gap is documentary rather than physical, and it is worth naming because it changes how a buyer should research here. Riverdale's municipal code is hosted off site and returned a refusal to every attempt on 22 August 2026, which is why nothing on this companion carries an ordinance number for anything, including the park and trail rules the city enforces with citations. The general plan and zoning map are linked through the building inspections page and the address tried returned a not found error, so no adoption date, no ordinance number and no land use posture is stated here. The police department's own pages did the same. Three ordinary civic lookups, three dead ends, on one day.
What fills the gap is the budget, and it fills it unusually well. The city's adopted FY 2026 final budget is a full document with account numbers and the finance officer's notes attached, and between them those notes name the parks capital projects, the roundabout on 1050 West at $1.7 million, a million dollars of local option road spending with pavement additions and maintenance broken out, nine hundred thousand of federal air quality funding, three hundred and fifty thousand in state class C road funds, the county contribution to heavy rescue, the pool access line and the seven redevelopment funds. Anybody researching Riverdale seriously should open that document first.
Four cities studied a joint fire district in 2024, no outcome has been published, and a decision would change the emergency service on this page. A news report of 25 June 2024 records Roy, South Ogden, Riverdale and Washington Terrace investigating the creation of a unified fire district covering firefighting and emergency medical services, with a consultant engaged for a reported fee and a report expected in the autumn of that year. The same report records station counts at the time of two, two, one and one respectively, and notes that South Ogden and Riverdale had signed a joint fire protection agreement in 2019 and both later withdrew from it. The outcome of the study was not established in this research and no participating city has published one on any page reached on 22 August 2026. That is a live question with a long fuse: a fire district would change how the service on this page is governed, funded and stationed, in four cities at once. Treat the current arrangement as current rather than settled, and ask the city.
Living with it
A complete small city with three things missing, and every one of the three is over a line.
The honest summary of a Riverdale address is that it asks very little and that the little it asks is specific. Settle which city the property is actually in from the county's parcel record rather than from the postcode or the mailing city, because 84405 covers four municipalities and the postal answer is wrong more often than it is right along this stretch. Decide how much of the corridor you want at the end of the street, by driving it at the hour that matters. Pull the federal flood map on any low parcel near the river, because the city that governs the ground publishes no flood history of its own. Ask the planning department about the compatible use overlay if the parcel sits toward the southern side. And check the live bridge work if it crosses the daily route, because it is scheduled to end in autumn 2026 and everything about it changes then.
What the address gives back is a short list of phone numbers and an unusually complete municipal service. A city of about nine thousand that runs its own fire engine with advanced emergency medical technician ambulance cover and a heavy rescue capability answering into the next county, its own police force, and its own water, sewer, garbage and recycling on one bill, has kept the things that matter at three in the morning. Add a recreation building open fifteen hours a day for a couple of dollars, three parks, a paved river reach with a pump track, everyday shopping inside the city rather than a drive away, and road access that two interstate crossings make genuinely excellent.
What it does not give is a swimming pool, a library branch, a dog park or a commuter rail platform, and it gives one school inside the limits rather than a full set. Each of the missing four sits in a neighbouring city and none of them is far, but each is over a line and each is somebody else's to run. The rest of the two counties, including the canyon, the two ski resorts, the reservoirs and the bench trails, is a drive from here rather than an amenity of here, and the region hub indexes all of it. A Riverdale address is a small complete city on a very large road, and knowing which of the two you are buying is the whole point of this companion.
The city keeps the fire engine, the police car and the water main, and buys the swimming, the library and the secondary school from its neighbours. Learning that division on day one is worth more than any amount of description.
Keep reading
Five more pages on Riverdale, and the question each one settles.
The river
The Weber River in Riverdale
A pump track at the trailhead, a rule the city enforces, and a seam it hands north.
Read the guideThe road
Riverdale Road and the jobs
8,761 jobs, a fund named after the street, and a city that names no tenant at all.
Read the guideThe Fourth
Old Glory Days
A cannon at six, a parade at half past nine, and a swim night in the next city.
Read the guideThe parks
The parks and the Community Center
Three parks, no acreage anywhere, a drought day off, and a playground in the budget.
Read the guideThe crossroads
The crossroads and the base edge
Two interstates in four and a half square miles, and a museum two bodies disagree on.
Read the guideThe whole set
Riverdale, in full
Nine thousand residents, 8,761 jobs, one river reach and two interstates on 4.6 square miles.
Open the companionQuick answers
Moving here, answered.
Yes, and it does more than a city this size usually does. The Riverdale Fire Department is at 4334 South Parker Drive, on 801-394-7481 for non emergencies, and the city describes fire suppression, ambulance service at the advanced emergency medical technician level, fire prevention, commercial inspections and public education, around the clock. It sits inside the mutual aid system with the surrounding Weber County departments and provides heavy rescue as a regional resource for Weber and Davis counties, which the city's adopted FY 2026 budget confirms with a note recording county funding for the programme. The staffing model is not published anywhere.
Riverdale is in the Weber School District, the county district, which is separate from the Ogden City School District. One school stands inside the city: the state and the district both print its name as Riverdale School, kindergarten through grade six, at 1160 W 4400 S on an Ogden mailing address, with 378 students in the State Board of Education's October 2025 file. The elementary form of the name is in common use. Secondary schooling runs to T.H. Bell Jr High and Bonneville High, both of which stand on parcels inside Washington Terrace. This site does not rate schools and the district runs the boundary tool.
No branch is inside the city. The Weber County Library System publishes five branches and the two nearest to Riverdale are the Pleasant Valley Branch on Adams Avenue and the Southwest Branch at 2039 W 4000 S in Roy, which resolves to Roy city on the federal boundary layer. All five branches keep the same published hours: Sunday one until five from September to May, Monday to Thursday ten until nine, and Friday and Saturday ten until six. Library service for a Riverdale address is therefore a county service rather than a city one, and it involves crossing a city line.
The one figure this page prints is a census statistic rather than a market number. U.S. Census American Community Survey 2020-2024 five year estimates, table B25077, put the median value of owner occupied housing in Riverdale city at $395,200, with a margin of error of plus or minus $31,042, which is about eight percent of the estimate. Weber County's equivalent on the same survey is $426,700, so the city sits about seven percent below its county. That is a survey of what owners report their homes are worth, not a record of what anything sold for; the market side belongs to this site's practical Riverdale city guide.
The city bills culinary water, sewer collection, garbage and recycling itself, and its public works department oversees streets, water, sewer, garbage and parks maintenance. Sewer treatment is handled by the Central Weber Sewer Improvement District, and the city's adopted budget records passing through a district increase of four and two thirds percent on its own sewer line. Where the culinary water itself comes from, whether the city's own wells, purchased wholesale supply, or both, is not published on any city page reached on 22 August 2026, which is a real gap and one the public works counter can close.
The city was publishing one as of 22 August 2026. Riverdale states across its business and public works pages that Weber Basin Water notified it of a 20 percent restriction in its water supply, and it publishes no start date, no end date and no ordinance number alongside that statement. The visible consequence is at Riverdale Park, where the splash pad is closed every Thursday under the city's own 2026 schedule adjustment for water conservation because of drought conditions. Both are dated facts rather than permanent ones and both are worth re checking at the city before relying on them.
It might be, and nobody has published an answer. A news report of 25 June 2024 records Roy, South Ogden, Riverdale and Washington Terrace investigating a unified fire district covering firefighting and emergency medical services, with a consultant engaged and a report expected that autumn. The same report notes that South Ogden and Riverdale had signed a joint fire protection agreement in 2019 and both later withdrew from it. No participating city has published an outcome on any page reached on 22 August 2026. A district would change how the service is governed, funded and stationed in four cities at once, so ask the city rather than assume.
Neither. There is no municipal swimming pool inside the city and Riverdale buys pool access from the neighbouring city instead, with a charges for services account in its own adopted budget named for the Roy complex and its own Fourth of July swim night held there. There is no dog park either: none of the city's three park listings names one, none appears in the adopted budget, and none appears anywhere on the city's site. Neighbouring cities do publish a dog park, so this is a genuine difference rather than a documentation gap.
Eight in the morning until five in the afternoon, Monday to Friday, at the Civic Center at 4600 South Weber River Drive, Riverdale, UT 84405, on 801-394-5541. The recreation side runs from a different building at 4360 S. Parker Drive on 801-621-6084, six in the morning until nine at night, Monday to Saturday, and that is also where pavilion bookings are made, in person or online, since the city states that telephone reservations are no longer accepted. The city posts facility closures as news items on its own site rather than on the facility pages, so the news feed is the place to check before a visit.
One switchboard, four missing things and a parcel record that settles what a postcode never will.
The practical version of a Riverdale move is a short list and it is worth working through before an offer rather than after. Settle which city the property is actually in from the county's own parcel record, because postcode 84405 covers four municipalities and the mailing city is wrong here more often than it is right. Drive the corridor from the specific street at the hour your household would use it, because how much of that road you want at the end of the drive is the defining question in this city. Pull the federal flood map on any low parcel near the river, because the city that governs that ground publishes no flood history at all. Ask the planning department about the compatible use overlay if the parcel sits toward the southern side, because a local government rather than the Air Force holds that answer. And work out which neighbouring city supplies the pool, the library branch and the dog park, because Riverdale has none of the three. Tell me what you are weighing and I will introduce you to a Weber and Morgan partner agent who can pull the parcel and put the right questions in the contract, 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.