Taylorsville, Utah | |
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City | |
Location in Salt Lake County and the state of Utah. |
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Coordinates: 40°39′18″N 111°56′58″W / 40.65500°N 111.94944°WCoordinates: 40°39′18″N 111°56′58″W / 40.65500°N 111.94944°W | |
Country | United States |
State | Utah |
County | Salt Lake |
Settled | 1848 |
Incorporated | April 24, 1996 |
Named for | John Taylor |
Government | |
• Mayor | Larry Johnson |
• City Council | Ernest Burgess, Kristie Overson, Brad Christopherson, Dama Barbour & Dan Armstrong |
• Presiding Judge | Marsha Thomas |
Area | |
• Total | 10.7 sq mi (27.7 km2) |
• Land | 10.7 sq mi (27.7 km2) |
• Water | 0.0 sq mi (0.0 km2) |
Elevation | 4,295 ft (1,309 m) |
Population (2015) | |
• Total | 60,514 |
• Density | 5,415/sq mi (2,076.5/km2) |
Time zone | Mountain (MST) (UTC-7) |
• Summer (DST) | MDT (UTC-6) |
ZIP codes | 84129, 84123 |
Area code(s) | 385, 801 |
FIPS code | 49-75360 |
GNIS feature ID | 1433206 |
Website | http://www.taylorsvilleut.gov/ |
Taylorsville is a city in Salt Lake County, Utah, United States. It is part of the Salt Lake City, Utah Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 58,657 at the 2010 census. Taylorsville was incorporated from the Taylorsville-Bennion CDP and portions of the Kearns CDP on April 24, 1996. The city is located adjacent to interstate 215 and Bangerter Highway. It is centrally located in the middle of the Salt Lake Valley.
The area called Taylorsville today is made up of three historic communities in the central part of Salt Lake County: Taylorsville, Bennion, and Kearns. These communities incorporated through a vote of the people with over 70 percent approval in September 1995. The city officially became the City of Taylorsville during the centennial anniversary of Utah's statehood in 1996.
The land on which Taylorsville is located is part of an interconnected alluvial plain that was formed by the wearing down of the Wasatch and Oquirrh Mountains to the east and west. Beneath the surface Taylorsville sits on more than a kilometer of unconsolidated rock, sand, and clay. The inactive Taylorsville Fault has been traced down the center of the Salt Lake Valley. Lake Bonneville shaped the topography of the area and deposited lake bottom clay and sand. As Lake Bonneville dried up over the past 14,000 years, the salt from the breakdown of rock remains, making the soil alkaline. Like most desert soils, it has little organic material and is hard to work.
A broad, east-west running ridge called "Bennion Hill" rises perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding area. Bennion Hill is the eastern end of a wide ridge which rises toward Farnsworth Peak in the Oquirrh Mountains to the west.
The first (unnamed) people in the region appeared during or after the last ice age on the shores of what remained of Lake Bonneville. Less than five miles (8 km) from Taylorsville evidence of people killing and eating a mammoth have been found. Some of this region’s first named visitors were Fremont people who used the area to hunt and gather food along the Jordan River more than a thousand years ago. A large Fremont settlement on City Creek used the land where Taylorsville is located as hunting and foraging especially along the river. In more recent times Ute bands passed through the valley between the marshes of the Great Salt Lake and Utah Valley. Most of the area was dry sagebrush-covered land without any natural water sources except the Jordan River. A well-used Ute trail wound along the west side of the river at approximately 1300 West which the Ute used in spring and fall. Early settlers observed small encampments of Ute in the cottonwoods along the Jordan River. At least one local settler called these people the "Yo-No'". Whether the name is his own creation or an approximation of something they said is unknown.