City West Haven, Weber County
Ten parks, four water districts, five annual events and twenty five feet of elevation across the whole city
West Haven, a young city on flat ground doing everything at once.
West Haven holds about 25,000 people on ten and a half square miles of the Weber County flats, and it has grown by nearly half since the last census. The city runs ten parks, four bookable pavilions, a barn that seats 124 and overnight camping on a river trail its own parks page never names. It does not run water, police or a library. Six pages on the city itself, and one honest handover to the river subject that reaches its western edge.
The short answer
West Haven is a flat, fast growing city of about 25,000 on the west side of Weber County, and the quickest way to picture it is by what the city itself runs: ten parks, four pavilions you can book, a campground on a river trail, five annual events set by rule rather than by date, and a barn that seats 124. What it does not run is water. Four separate districts do that, split by quadrant. City Hall is at 4150 South 3900 West and the offices keep a four day week, Monday to Thursday, nine to five. Checked August 2026.
The live question
Is a West Haven address actually inside West Haven?
Often it is not, and this is the single most useful thing to know before you spend a weekend looking at houses out here. The city sits inside a much larger apron of unincorporated Weber County that shares its postal address, its school district and its look. Drive 1900 West, the state route that runs the length of the city's east side, and you pass through Marriott-Slaterville, then West Haven, then a wedge of Ogden city that reaches west across the road around 2900 to 3100 South, then about half a mile of unincorporated county around 3300 to 3700 South, then Roy. Five jurisdictions on one straight road, and only two of the transitions are signed in any way a driver would notice.
The city is not hiding this. Its own adopted water plan says it plainly: most new development is occurring in unincorporated Weber County, with city growth concentrated along 1900 West. Two of the schools people call West Haven schools sit on that county ground rather than inside the line, and so does a good deal of the new building that shows up on a portal under the West Haven name. The mail says West Haven either way. The vote, the police contract, the park system, the pavilion booking and the city's own recreation program do not.
It cuts the other way too, which is the part that surprises people. Century Mobile Home and RV Park at 1483 West 2100 South is filed under Ogden by nearly every travel directory that lists it, and the operator's own address and the federal boundary layer both say West Haven. So the rule to carry into any search here is simple and it is not a criticism of anybody: a mailing address is a delivery instruction, not a jurisdiction. The page on moving here works through which questions change depending on which side of the line a parcel sits on.
The practical move is to ask the city. Call 801-731-4519 or go to City Hall at 4150 South 3900 West, Monday to Thursday between nine and five, with the address in your hand. That one call also answers the water question, which is the other thing about a West Haven address that nobody guesses right.
Start here
Two farm settlements, one city since 1991, and twenty five feet of elevation across the whole of it.
West Haven is two old places under one name. Wilson, on the north and east, takes its name from four Wilson brothers, Bradley, Lewis, Harlow and George, who started farming here in 1854; the city's own history gives an irrigation system in 1879, a ward in 1882, and a sugar factory in 1898 that brought electricity and telephone service with it. Kanesville, to the south and west, was first settled in 1868 by Orin Hedlock, John Atkin and Calvin C. Wilson, and took its name at the suggestion of Apostle John Taylor, in honor of Colonel Thomas L. Kane. Residents of both voted in 1990 to become one municipality, and the city dates its establishment to July 1991. That makes West Haven younger than most of the people living in it.
The land is the other half of the explanation. Point elevations taken inside the city run 4,259 feet at City Hall, 4,270 at the cemetery and 4,245 out near the campground, which is a spread of twenty five feet across ten and a half square miles. There is no bench here, no canyon mouth, no creek in a gully. What there is instead is a grid of section roads laid over old farm ground, sloping so gently toward the Great Salt Lake wetlands that you would not call it a slope. If you are used to Utah cities that climb, this one will read as unusually easy to walk and unusually hard to orient yourself in.
The city describes itself in one sentence worth quoting because it is honest about the trade: largely a bedroom community, with a significant commercial and industrial corridor along 21st Street and 1900 West. Everything heavy sits on that eastern edge, near the freeway. Everything else is houses, and half of them are newer than 2011. Growth since the last census has run close to fifty percent, which the state ranks second fastest in Utah among places between twenty and fifty thousand. The page on moving here takes that apart with the property tables rather than the adjectives.
West Haven at a glance
24,960
people at the state's estimate for 1 July 2025, against 16,766 counted in 2020
10.6 sq mi
of city, on ground that varies by about twenty five feet end to end
10
city parks, four bookable pavilions and one campground on the river trail
4
separate districts supplying culinary water, because the city supplies none
The dates
From four brothers farming in 1854 to twenty five thousand people and four water districts.
Every row names the body that published it. Where the city's own account and something in wider circulation disagree, the city's account is the one printed here, because it is the city's history.
| When | What happened | Who publishes it | Why it still matters |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1854 | Bradley, Lewis, Harlow and George Wilson begin farming the ground that becomes the Wilson end of the city | West Haven City | The northern half of the city is named for a family, and the name is still on the irrigation company that waters part of it |
| 1868 | Orin Hedlock, John Atkin and Calvin C. Wilson settle Kanesville, named at Apostle John Taylor's suggestion for Colonel Thomas L. Kane | West Haven City | The southern half has a separate origin, a separate name and, to this day, a separate water district |
| 1879 and 1882 | An irrigation system is built at Wilson, and a ward follows three years later | West Haven City | Irrigation came before almost everything else here, which is why a modern buyer still has to ask which company supplies the secondary water |
| 1898 | A sugar factory opens at Wilson and brings electricity and telephone service with it | West Haven City | The city's own account of how utilities first arrived, and the earliest version of the industrial strip that still runs along the east side |
| 1990 | Residents of Wilson and Kanesville vote to incorporate | West Haven City | The vote and the establishment are two separate events a year apart, and several accounts in circulation compress them into one |
| July 1991 | West Haven City is established | West Haven City | The city prints the month and the year and no day of the month, so no exact date appears on these pages |
| 2013 | The city cemetery opens at 1550 South 2350 West on ten acres, with room for up to 6,500 plots | West Haven City | The one piece of city ground that fronts the Weber River, and the landmark everybody uses to find the trail camping just north of it |
| 20 September 2023 | The current zoning map is adopted | West Haven City | The one hard date on the city's planning page, and the document that governs what can be built where |
| 2024 | Haven Bay Elementary opens at 5020 West 3300 South | Weber School District and the Utah State Board of Education | A new school inside the city limits took roughly three hundred pupils off Kanesville's roll in a single year |
| 1 July 2025 | The state's population estimate reaches 24,960, up 48.9 percent since the 2020 census | Utah Population Committee | Second fastest growth in Utah among places of twenty to fifty thousand, behind only Washington City |
| 3 December 2025 | The city adopts a Water Use and Preservation Element by Resolution 54-2025 | West Haven City, published by the Utah Division of Water Resources | The best document this city has produced about itself, and the one that corrects nearly everything in circulation about who supplies water here |
| 1 July 2026 | A statewide access rule takes effect for wildlife management areas, including the wetlands west of the city | Utah Division of Wildlife Resources | Anyone eighteen or over now needs a free digital permit or a Utah license to be on that ground, which catches out anyone who last went a year ago |
The population figures are the Utah Population Committee's estimate for 1 July 2025 and the 2020 census count. The Census Bureau's five year survey also publishes 21,563 for this city, which is an average across 2020 to 2024 rather than a reading of any single year, and it should never be set beside the other two. What a house here is worth this month belongs to the practical West Haven city guide rather than to these pages.
Two things fall out of that column. The first is that the city's best current document by a distance is the water plan it adopted in December 2025. It is the only place West Haven describes its own quadrants in its own words, it names four culinary providers where nearly everything else names three, and it states flatly that the city is not a water provider. If you are researching an address here seriously, open that before you open anything else. The page on the water districts takes it apart.
The second is that the city publishes rules where other cities publish dates. Its five annual events are given as a rule each, the fourth weekend in June, the Monday before Halloween, the first Monday after Thanksgiving, which means a plan made from them is still right in three years when every posted date has gone stale. The page on the calendar uses the rules as the spine and treats the dates as the perishable part, which is what they are.
The region
The river gets here last, which is the only regional claim this city can honestly make.
Six subjects in these two counties are shared ground: they are written once and serve all fourteen cities, so no town has to explain a canyon or a ski road that half a dozen of its neighbours reach by the same route. West Haven has an address in exactly one of them and holds it at the downstream end, past the freeway, where the trail runs out to the cemetery.
The corridor
The Ogden and Weber river parkways
The whole route through five jurisdictions, its four owners and the argument about how long it is.
Read the guideSix miles northeast
Historic 25th Street
The listed district, the buildings and their dates, the parking that now costs, and the walk.
Read the guideAll six
The two counties, gathered
Fourteen cities, six shared subjects, and the hub that holds them together.
The region hubThe other five are drives from here, and honest ones, so the drive is what this city's pages give you. Ogden Canyon opens off a road that starts on the far side of Ogden and there is no West Haven ground on it, so the canyon guide is somewhere you plan a morning toward. Snowbasin and Powder Mountain are reached through that canyon or over the state route into the next valley, and the resorts guide compares the two properly. Pineview and Causey sit above the canyon mouth on a different river entirely, on the reservoirs guide. The shoreline trail and the peak above it climb out of Ogden, North Ogden and Pleasant View, so the bench guide is a forty minute drive and a thousand feet of climb from a flat city. The one that touches West Haven is the river, and it touches it at the western end, past the freeway, out where the trail runs to the cemetery.
If you only have one afternoon
Start at Country Park, finish on the trail behind the cemetery.
First stop
R. Kenneth Baldwin Country Park
The city's center of gravity at 2825 West 3300 South, with two pavilions, a playground and the recreation office on site.
The parks pageThen
North across the grid
Twenty minutes of flat driving takes you from the middle of the city to its river corner, and the numbers on the street signs do the navigating.
The ranked listLate afternoon
The trail behind the cemetery
The published west end sits at 1500 South 2350 West, with the city's overnight camping spots just north of the cemetery ground.
The river pageOr instead
Come the fourth weekend in June
One week of the year the whole city is in one park, with a rodeo, a parade, a car show and a firework night.
The calendar pageLiving with it
A city that runs parks and events and buys nearly everything else from somebody next door.
West Haven keeps a short list of things and contracts the rest. It runs the parks, the pavilions, the cemetery, the recreation program and the events, and it rents out a barn and a community room. Law enforcement comes from the Weber County Sheriff's Office under contract, fire and ambulance from the Weber Fire District, animal control from Weber County Animal Services, culinary water from four separate improvement districts, and irrigation water from a longer list than that. There is no city library, no municipal pool and no city police department. None of that is unusual for a city that only turned thirty five, and all of it changes who you telephone when something needs sorting out.
What is genuinely good here is easy to name and rarely written down. Ten parks in ten and a half square miles is a lot of park for a place this size, they all run on one rule book and one set of hours, and four of them have a pavilion you can book from the middle of April. The ground is flat enough that a child can ride the length of a neighborhood without a hill in it. The city publishes overnight camping spots on a river trail, which is the sort of thing a city of a hundred thousand does not manage. And the annual calendar is set by rule, so the fourth weekend in June is the fourth weekend in June forever.
What is genuinely hard is equally plain. The city publishes an address and nothing else for seven of its ten parks, no acreage for any of them, and no parking for any trail access point. Its own parks page never once mentions the river or names a trail, though it happily rents you a campsite beside one. The offices are shut on Fridays. And the boundary is the real work: an address, a school and a listing can each read West Haven while sitting on county ground. The page on moving here is the one to read before you make an offer.
City Hall keeps a four day week, and the one question you most need answered is only answerable there. West Haven's department pages all publish the same hours, Monday to Thursday, nine in the morning to five in the afternoon, at 4150 South 3900 West on 801-731-4519. Parks and Recreation keeps the same four day week at its own office at 2825 West 3300 South on 801-731-8882. So a Friday drive out to ask which culinary district serves a parcel, or to book a pavilion, or to arrange a night on the trail, finds a locked door. Some material in circulation prints eight in the morning to six in the evening for the city offices; the city's own pages do not. Plan the call for a Monday.
A city that will rent you a campsite on a trail it never names in its own parks copy is a city still deciding what it wants to be known for.
The West Haven set
Six pages, each one built on something a public body actually published.
Everything The Local has written about West Haven: five things worth doing ranked in order, the river trail's west end and the camping the city books by telephone, an annual calendar written as rules instead of dates, ten parks under one rule book, the four water districts nobody outside the city can name, and what an address here really asks of a household.
Quick answers
West Haven, answered.
On the west side of Weber County, immediately west and southwest of Ogden, between Marriott-Slaterville to the north and Roy to the south, with Hooper on its southwest corner and unincorporated county ground on much of the rest of its edge. City Hall is at 4150 South 3900 West, West Haven, UT 84401, on 801-731-4519. The city covers about 10.6 square miles of the valley floor, and point elevations inside it run from roughly 4,245 to 4,270 feet, so the whole place varies by about twenty five feet.
The Utah Population Committee's estimate for 1 July 2025 is 24,960, against 16,766 counted at the 2020 census. That is a rise of 48.9 percent in five years, which the state's own May 2026 summary ranks second fastest in Utah among communities of twenty to fifty thousand, behind Washington City. Two other numbers circulate. The Census Bureau's five year survey gives 21,563, which is an average across 2020 to 2024 rather than a count in any one year. The city's own About page still says over 17,000, which is roughly where it stood in 2020.
Yes, and it costs nothing. Every city park is free to enter, all ten run from six in the morning to ten at night, and four of them have a pavilion with tables, electricity and restrooms that you can book from the middle of April. R. Kenneth Baldwin Country Park at 2825 West 3300 South is the one to start with, because it has the largest pavilion, a playground and the recreation office on the same ground. The river trail at the north end of the city is the other free afternoon, and the city rents overnight camping spots on it.
Neither is inside the city. The nearest public library is the Weber County Library's Southwest Branch at 2039 West 4000 South, which sits in Roy, a few minutes south. There is no municipal swimming pool in West Haven at all, which is worth knowing because the West Haven Days roster includes a free swim day and the organizer does not publish where it is held. City recreation instead runs a long list of youth sports from baseball and softball through hockey, flag football, tennis, pickleball, karate, archery and an outdoor camp.
Not the city. West Haven adopted a water plan in December 2025 that opens by saying it is not a water provider at all, and four improvement districts do the job between them, each taking a quarter of the map. Which quarter your parcel sits in decides which district bills the tap, and a separate list of eight irrigation companies decides what runs the sprinklers. That is the single most consequential thing about an address here that no listing anywhere will tell you, and the city can point you at the right district on 801-731-4519.
It is not, and the gap is bigger than most maps suggest. West Haven runs out at about 5100 West and the wetlands are reached through Hooper, the town beyond it, whose ground stretches roughly two and a half miles further before you get anywhere near the water. So the honest West Haven version of that trip is a drive of four or five miles and a wide flat horizon at the end of the section roads. The rules for being on the ground itself changed in the summer of 2026, and the river page on this site sets them out.
Four, and one of the best known is not among them. West Haven School at 4385 South 3900 West, Haven Bay Elementary at 5020 West 3300 South, Rocky Mountain Junior High at 4350 West 4800 South and Quest Academy at 4862 West 4000 South all sit inside the line; the first three are Weber School District and Quest Academy is a separate charter. Kanesville School at 3112 South 3500 West carries a West Haven mailing address and sits on unincorporated Weber County ground. West Field High School, also often called a West Haven school, is on county ground as well. This site does not rate schools and the district runs the boundary tool.
Five things carry a real visit, and they are ranked in order on their own page. Camping overnight on the river trail through the city's Parks and Recreation office is the most unusual, and it is arranged by telephone rather than online. Walking or riding the west end of the trail from behind the cemetery is the free afternoon. West Haven Days on the fourth weekend in June is the week the whole city turns out, with a rodeo, a parade, a car show and fireworks. R. Kenneth Baldwin Country Park is the everyday answer. And a private RV park on the northeast corner stays open all year.
No, it is a separate municipality with its own council, its own park system and its own recreation department, established in July 1991 after a 1990 vote by residents of the Wilson and Kanesville settlements. What makes people ask is the postal address: a great many properties on and around this city's edges carry an Ogden mailing address, and Ogden city itself reaches west across 1900 West in a wedge around 2900 to 3100 South. There is also a stretch of unincorporated Weber County between West Haven and Roy on the same road. Confirm any specific address with the city rather than with the mail.
Six pages on a city that grew by half in five years and still runs a four day week.
West Haven asks a short and slightly odd list of questions of a buyer. Which of four culinary districts serves the parcel, and which of eight sources supplies its irrigation water, because the answer changes by quadrant and the city cannot answer it for you. Whether the address is inside the city at all or on the unincorporated county ground that surrounds it, because the schools, the services and the vote all turn on that. How much of the new building nearby is city ground and how much is not. And whether a household needs a library branch or a pool, because neither is here. 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 research and 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.