Taylorsville is a city in Salt Lake County, Utah, United States.
The population was 57,439 at the 2000 census. Its estimated
population in 2005 stood at 58,009. Taylorsville was incorporated
from the Taylorsville-Bennion CDP and portions of the Kearns CDP on
April 24, 1996.
Little is known about this area before 1848. Some of this
region’s first known inhabitants were Fremont people who used the
area to hunt and gather food along the Jordan River. Ute bands
wandered through the valley between the marshes of the Great Salt
Lake and Utah Valley.
The first Mormon pioneer settlers, Joseph and Susanna Harker,
forded the Jordan River and settled along the Jordan River in 1848.
They and others settled along the river bottoms, where they dug
ditches and cleared land for small farms and pastures. In 1858 the
U.S. Army marched through the area on their way to Camp Floyd in
Fairfield. A small adobe fort was built in the 1860s on bluffs
above the river to protect settlers from Indian attacks that never
materialized, and it was soon abandoned. In 1863, the center of the
valley was divided into the West Jordan, South Jordan, East Jordan,
and North Jordan LDS Wards. South Jordan and West Jordan kept their
names and East Jordan became Midvale. North Jordan in time became
Taylorsville and Bennion. By 1876, the South Jordan and North
Jordan Canals were joined to carry water from the Jordan River.
This brought land from South Jordan to Granger under cultivation
and, therefore, more families to the area, almost all of them
farmers. In 1881 the Utah and Salt Lake Canal was built farther
west, allowing irrigation farming to expand.
During World War II, the U.S. Air Force wanted an isolated place
to build a training base safe from any attacks by the Japanese and
on the main rail routes to the Pacific Coast. The War Department
bought about 5,000 acres (20 km²) of land where Kearns is currently
located. Camp Kearns, as it came to be known, opened in 1942. Just
one year later, Camp Kearns had 40,000 residents and was Utah’s
third largest city. It was partially a basic training facility for
replacement troops headed for the war against Japan.
Most of the men who trained at Camp Kearns stayed only a few
weeks and were glad to get away from it, as living conditions were
horrible. Camp Kearns was closed as an active base in 1946, and the
buildings and materials auctioned off in 1948. Some of the first
homes in Kearns were built from materials left over from the
buildings of the base.
Camp Kearns gave an indirect boost to Taylorsville in that a
pipeline was constructed to bring water from the east side of Salt
Lake to the camp. Once Camp Kearns closed, the presence of clean
drinking water and a sewer treatment plant made it possible for
people to move to Kearns and live in some of the first large
subdivisions built in western Salt Lake County in the 1950s. The
population of Salt Lake County began expanding rapidly in the late
1960s, and farmers found that they could sell their land to
developers for a lot more than they were making on the farms.
Population growth and development began rapidly after this. In
1967, the Salt Lake Community College moved its main campus to
Taylorsville, giving additional boost to the local economy and
encouraging further growth.
Taylorsville and Bennion continued rapid growth into the early
1990s. Many people began to feel that the Salt Lake County
Commission, which governed the area, was allowing too much growth
too fast, especially apartment complexes. The residents felt like
they were being ignored, resulting in the first drive to
incorporate Taylorsville City. This failed by a narrow margin.
By 1995, the rising costs of county services, a feeling that the
county wasn’t giving residents their money’s worth (including
insufficient law enforcement, the lack of say in how the community
was developing, and even more uncontrolled growth) convinced voters
to approve the creation of a new city in 1995 from the
unincorporated cities of Taylorsville and Bennion. Some Kearns
residents were angry when Taylorsville extended its western border
to 4000 West, which was considered by residents in that area to be
part of Kearns. There was some question of what the new city would
be called: Midvalley City, Oquirrh City, Centennial, and
Taylorsville-Bennion were all discussed. Taylorsville was
eventually chosen. Taylorsville’s nickname is “Utah’s Centennial
City," since it officially came into existence 100 years after Utah
became a state.
Since incorporation, Taylorsville has continued to grow, albeit
slowly, since most of the land in the city has been developed. Most
of the new growth is taking place near the banks of the Jordan
River in the eastern part of town.