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 57,439 at the
2000 census.
Taylorsville was
incorporated from the Taylorsville-Bennion CDP and portions of the
Kearns
CDP on April 24, 1996.
History
The area called Taylorsville today is made up of three historic
communities in the central part of Salt Lake County: Taylorsville,
Bennion, and Kearns. Taylorsville, Bennion, and part of Kearns
became the City of Taylorsville during the centennial anniversary
of Utah statehood, 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.
There are poorly documented suggestions that Spanish missionaries,
soldiers, and explorers came through the area beginning in the
mid-1600s. The whole region was called "Teguayo" and "Lake Copalla"
(Utah Lake) appear on maps of Spanish Nuevo Mexico. Spanish and
then Mexican land claims remained until the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo which ended the Mexican War in 1853 and ceded the whole of
northern Mexico to the United States including a few thousand
Mormon settlers who had taken up residence in July 1847.
Mormon Settlement
The first Mormon pioneer settlers, Joseph and Susanna Harker from
England built a log cabin on the west side of the Jordan River in
November 1848 on what was called then “the Church Farm” near 3300
South. In 1849 Samuel and John Bennion and several other families
moved south crossing the river on the ice in January. There was
little in the way of building materials, so the families dug into
the bluffs of the Jordan River for shelter. The tiny settlement,
the first "over Jordan," was called Harker’s Settlement, and they
began the difficult work of digging ditches to move water out of
the Jordan River and onto the land on the west side. The soil was
hard to work and they kept looking for better land to farm. The
infamous crickets destroyed much of that year’s crop and so the
group moved farther south to where Big Cottonwood Creek flowed into
the Jordan River about 4800 South known then as Field’s
Bottom.
By working together eight families managed to bring in the first
successful crop in 1851 using water brought down from Bingham Creek
by what was later called Gardner’s Millrace. John and Esther
Bennion’s daughter, Rachael, was the first pioneer child to be born
in Field’s Bottom. Despite the struggle to get food and shelter in
those early days, John Bennion described Field’s Bottom in these
words:
if peace dwells upon this earth it is here and here
are thehappiest and most prosperous people in the world,
enjoying freesoil, pure air, liberty to worship our God
just as we please…
By 1851 more families settled in or near Field’s Bottom where they
dug the "lower ditch" and cleared land for small farms and
pastures. In January 1852 Harker’s Settlement was organized as a
part of the West Jordan LDS Ward that included the Salt Lake Valley
west of the Jordan River. Some families returned to cabins they had
built earlier and dismantled them and brought the logs across the
river and reassembled the cabins.
In the 1853 the continued threat of attack by angry Utes, locally
called the "Walker War" or the "Utah Valley War", forced the
settlers to build a adobe fort called the English Fort just north
of the North Jordan Burying Ground in 1854. Stories about "Indian
depredations" in Utah and Sanpete Counties and the massacre of
John W. Gunnison and his surveying party
caused such fear that Salt Lake City fortified itself. Two
livestock herders were killed in Cedar Valley, just over "South
Mountain" and the Ute attacked cattle herds in Tooele County just
over the Oquirrh Mountains. Isolated settlements either built forts
or were abandoned. Locals nicknamed the fort in North Jordan, "Fort
Hardscrabble" because it was built on what they considered a
useless piece of ground. About thirty families moved into or near
the fort for protection for the winter, but as the threat of attack
faded, families spread out once again and part of the fort was
converted into an LDS meeting house which also served as the
school.
Hickman Fort, farther south in Bennion, was built by William
Hickman. It was located about 5800 South on the bluff above the
west side of river. Between 1853 and 1857 Gardner’s Millrace was
extended north to the Bennion area and called the North Jordan
Canal, the first important canal on the west side of the Jordan
River.
By 1860 Harker’s Settlement, as the area was called, had 178
residents. The first post office was established with the name
Taylorsville which was the name of the LDS branch in that part of
the North Jordan, perhaps to distinguish it from Granger. The post
office was discontinued later. Elizabeth Harker’s home was used for
the first school classes.
In 1858 the threat of Johnston’s Army marching down Emigration
Canyon forced many settlers to pack up everything they could and
move south until the situation could be resolved. Most residents
ended up in Spanish Fork or camped out at Pondtown (Salem) near
Utah Lake. The home guard who remained behind to watch over the
settlement observed “Johnston’s Army” camp the first night after
passing through Salt Lake on the "flats' above the North Jordan
farms. Its large livestock herd ate everything to withn an inch of
the ground. The US Army continued on its way the next morning. In
July of 1858 Taylorsville residents returned and settled back into
the interrupted routine of summertime chores. By 1859 the adobe
fort was dissolving into the mud from which it was created. It was
decided to build a log school on top of the “hill” on 4800 South
which was closer to where most people in Taylorsville lived.
The area west of Jordan was divided into the West Jordan, South
Jordan, North Jordan and Herriman LDS Wards. North Jordan also
known as Taylorsville had a dependent branch at Bennion. The first
business in Taylorsville was a small store located near the school
and a blacksmith‘s shop across the street. John Webster, the
blacksmith, was appointed postmaster and once a week carried mail
from Murray in a clothes basket. In 1867 the log school was
replaced by a three room school made of rock and brick called "the
Rock Schoolhouse" that was used until 1898.
By 1876 the South Jordan Canal and the North Jordan Canal were
joined to carry water from the Jordan River above the bluffs west
of the Jordan and brought land from South Jordan to Granger under
cultivation. This brought more families to the area, almost all of
them farmers. Land west of the canals was cleared for dry farms
which were planted in the fall and harvested in early summer. A few
families moved just north of Taylorsville near 6200 South and
Redwood Road. John Bennion, one of the early settlers, gave this
area its name, Bennion. A tiny blue schoolhouse was built on the
corner of Redwood Road and 6200 South for the children to
attend.
In the 1880’s LDS Church president, John Taylor, hid from US
marshals at a home on the west side of the Jordan River near 4800
South. John Taylor's association with Taylorsville has often been
used to explain its name. The name, Taylorsville, used before the
1880s seems to call the John Taylor explanation for the town's name
into question. In 1881 the Utah and Salt Lake Canal was built which
allowed irrigation farming to expand even farther west above the
river between Bluffdale and Granger. Un-irrigated land to the west
was cleared and planted as dry farms. The 1880s saw a sawmill,
gristmill, and woollen mill built in West Jordan. Rawlings shoe
repair store was constructed. The Bennion Brothers built a grist
mill at 4800 South and the Jordan River.
In 1888 a one-room schoolhouse was built in Bennion on the corner
of 6200 South and Redwood Road. It was funded by the families of
students who attended. In 1890 another room was added and after
demolishing the older room, two new rooms were added in 1892 and
the building painted blue. From that point on it was called "the
little blue schoolhouse". Enough musicians lived in the area to
establish a brass band. People in Taylorsville and Bennion depended
on growing corn, wheat, oats, and alfalfa. In the 1890s sugar beets
became big business and many farmers started to clear additional
land to grow them. The beets were hauled to the West Jordan cutting
station until 1916 when the West Jordan Sugar Factory was
completed. Taylorsville and Bennion remained very small farming
towns.
The 1890s saw increased growth and the establishment of a small
business district at the intersection of Redwood Road and 4800
South. The largest store was Lindsay and Company which was later
called the Taylorsville Mercantile Company. In 1894 the
Taylorsville LDS Meetinghouse was built to house the Taylorsville
Ward of the LDS church.
Twentieth Century
The territorial legislature passed Utah’s first Compulsory
Education Law in 1890 which gradually brought most children off the
farms and into the classroom. It had little effect until the early
1900s when small local school districts, seen as a road block to
raising the standard of Utah education, were consolidated. In
December 1904 the Salt Lake County Commission voted to combine 22
of the 36 local school districts into the Granite School District
with boundaries that matched the LDS Granite Stake boundaries.
Schools which up to that time were often numbered were given
names.
In 1905 600 people lived in Bennion, enough to split from the
Taylorsville LDS Ward and create the Bennion Ward to the south.
Meetings were held in the blue wood-frame schoolhouse for a time
until the Bennion meetinghouse was built in 1907 at the corner of
6200 South and Redwood Road next to the school.
The need for a ‘modern’ school and the establishment of compulsory
tax-supported public schools throughout Utah gave rise to the old
Plymouth Elementary School on Redwood Road and 4800 South. By 1907
there were so many children in the Bennion school that the upper
grades were sent to the two-story red brick Plymouth School in
Taylorsville. In 1909 an amusement hall and classrooms were added
to the Taylorsville Chapel. Electricity came to the Taylorsville
area during the early 1900s but had little effect on the life of
most people who saw little use for it outside lighting their homes.
It was considered a luxury and many families chose not to connect
to the “new-fangled” wires until the 1920s or 1930s when rural
electrification made power available to everyone.
Two railroads were important to Taylorsville, the Rio Grande and
Western to Bingham Junction (Midvale) and the Bingham-Garfield
Railroad was added through the area in 1910. A well was dug at 4700
South and 5400 West where a locomotive watering station was built.
In 1913 the electric Salt Lake Inter-Urban, often call the “Orem
Line,” was built to make it possible to ride into Salt Lake or as
far as Payson on the “Red Arrow” in from the Francklyn Station in
Murray or at the Bennion Station. The line ran parallel to Redwood
Road about 1800 West. In 1915 the first water system was built by
private subscription. People who wanted clean water piped to their
homes paid to have it delivered to them. Later this system was
bought and expanded by the Taylorsville-Bennion Improvement
District. Electricity came to the area in 1916 along Redwood Road.
During World War I four young men from Taylorsville lost their
lives and sixteen served in the armed forces.
By the 1920s two canals were built to carry water to farms farther
and farther west. Redwood Road was finally rebuilt using concrete
making it faster and easier to travel for the mixture of
automobiles, wagons and horses that used it. How Redwood Road got
its name has been the subject of much debate but, when there are no
redwoods in the valley, the following explanation rings truest. A
line parallel to the base meridian was surveyed on the west side of
the Jordan River for use in measuring property lines. Redwood
stakes which did not decay in the ground were used for the "Redwood
Line". It remained the Redwood Line until 1895 when Redwood Road
was built as a main thoroughfare for the west side of Salt Lake
County. In 1927 the "Pole Line Road" 2700 West was
constructed.
World War II
In World War II 75 men from Taylorsville served and two lost their
lives overseas. After the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941,
the US Army Air Corps 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 of dry
farmland in the western part of Salt Lake Valley. The land
originally was part of a federal land grant to the state of Utah to
be used to benefit schools and universities in Utah. But it had
long since passed into private hands and was used for dry farms.
Camp Kearns went through renamings as the focus and mission of the
base changed, Camp Kearn was the name which stuck. It opened in
1942, but took about a year to gain its final size. The base was
named for Senator Thomas Kearns of Utah who had made his fortune in
the silver mines at Park City.
Just a year later Camp Kearns had 40,000 residents and was Utah’s
third largest city at the time. It had two main missions. It served
as a basic training facility for replacement troops headed for the
war against Japan. Camp Kearns included a huge 600 target practice
range, the largest in the US, a difficult, mile-long obstacle
course, a grenade practice ground, and barracks for thousands of
men on their way to the Pacific coast. The motor pool hired more
than eighty local women just to drive trucks, in all about 1200
civilians worked at the base as any given time. Camp Kearns had the
largest hospital in Utah at the time which spread into ten
buildings. A camp newspaper called the Valley View News provided
information and entertainment to the troops stationed there.
The base had a water system and one of two water treatment plants
in the state. The streets were laid out in a huge grid pattern
lined with over 900 wooden buildings covered with tar paper. A
railroad spur from the Denver and Rio Grande was built to transport
equipment and personnel to the base. By August 21, 1942, the Kearns
had of warehouse space, two all-purpose theaters, gyms, two fire
houses, several dusty parade grounds, a post office, a lending
library, and a bank. Thousands of trees and shrubs were planted to
keep the dust down.
The second mission of Camp Kearns was a practice air force base for
Army Air Corps ground crews. In time technical training of air
force ground crews became Camp Kearns main objective. This included
many kinds of schools: navigation, intelligence, radio, teletype,
clerical and many others. It was not an air force base with
airplanes landing and taking off, ground crews were trained on
planes scattered around the base.
The base had five chapels, three stores, and three theaters, one of
them for African-American servicemen. It still exists as part of
Kearns Junior High School. THe USO brought many entertainers to the
base to keep the troops from getting homesick. The Band Wagon
Committee raised more than $15,000,000 in war bonds from the
communities around Salt Lake and from the men and women in
uniform.
The base was dusty, hot in summer and cold in winter. Men who
trained there thought it was an awful place to live. They stayed in
the long tar paper-covered wooden sheds heated with pot-bellied
stoves and lighted with a few light bulbs. Each barrack was home to
sixty men sleeping in squeaky metal beds with thin mattresses and
not enough blankets in the winter and poor ventilation in the
summer.
Most of the men who trained at Camp Kearns stayed only a few weeks
and were glad to roll away from it on a train to California.
Despite the boost to the local economy, Salt Lake and the
surrounding communities did not appreciate the huge military
presence and tried to limit soldiers to the area around the base.
African-American soldiers were segregated both on and off
base.
As the war drew to a close, the base began a rapid decline.
Vice-President Truman made an inspection visit in August 1944. The
training functions were moved to California. 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. Oner of
the chapels survived to be incorporated in Our Lady of Perpetual
Sorrows Catholic Church.
Camp Kearns gave an indirect boost to Taylorsville in that a huge
water pipe brought 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.
Taylorsville and Bennion joined to form their own water and sewer
district to provide clean water. The large water tank on the hill
at 3200 west and 6200 South and the others ones buried inside the
hill are a part of the work to provide the clean water. Salt Lake
County’s rapidly growing population began expanding west in the
early 1970s and farmers found they could sell their land to
developers for a lot more than they were making on the farms.
Subdivisions began springing up.
Incorporation
In the 1980s the intersection at Redwood Road 5400 South began to
be developed into a regional retail center with Harmons, Grand
Central, Wal-mart and the Family Center. Taylorsville, Bennion, and
Kearns continued rapid growth into the early 1990s. Some people
felt that the Salt Lake County Commission, which governed the area,
was allowing too much growth too fast, especially apartment
complexes. The county seemed unwilling to listen to residents which
resulted in the first drive to incorporate Taylorsville City. It
failed by a narrow margin.
In 1995 voters approved the creation of a new city due to the
rising costs of county services, a feeling that the county was not
giving residents their money’s worth revolving around insufficient
law enforcement, a lack of input in how Taylorsville and Bennion
were developing, and the seemingly unlimited apartment
developments.
Many of Kearns residents were upset when Taylorsville’s proposed
boundary extended its western border all the way to 4000 West which
was considered by residents in that area to be part of Kearns. But
residents there approved Taylorsville’s incorporation by a
significant margin, (as they were given large tax breaks) and that
is where the border remains. However Kearns may regain the area if
the bid by the Kearns to incorporate is ratified. Since Utah's
current township law currently expires in 2010. If the law is not
extended, it would either have to become part of the county,
incorporate as its own city, or incorporate into a nearby town.
Most of Kearns residents, if only given the choice to incorporate
into other cities, would choose to become a part of
Taylorsville.
After incorporation there was lively discussion about what the new
city should be called. Midvalley City, Oquirrh City, Centennial,
and Taylorsville-Bennion were all discussed. Eventually common
sense prevailed and Taylorsville was chosen. Taylorsville’s
nickname is “Utah’s Centennial City” because it officially came
into existence one hundred years after Utah became a state.
Taylorsville's population
- 1980: 17,448 (1)
- 1990: 52,354 (1,2)
- 2000: 57,439
In 2004,
St.
George
surpassed Taylorsville in population, thereby
dropping Taylorsville from Utah's ninth-largest city to the
tenth.
1: Figures taken prior to incorporation
2: Area reported as
Taylorsville-Bennion during
the 1990 census.
Geography
Taylorsville is located at (40.654930, -111.949454) .
According to the
United
States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of
10.7 square miles (27.7 km²), all of it land.
Demographics
As of the
census of 2000, there were 57,439
people, 18,530 households, and 14,156 families residing in the
city. The
population density was
5,376.1 people per square mile (2,076.5/km²). There were 19,159
housing units at an average density of 1,793.2/sq mi
(692.6/km²). The racial makeup of the city was 85.55%
White, 0.88%
African American, 1.03%
Native American, 3.04%
Asian, 1.57%
Pacific Islander, 5.37% from
other races, and 2.55%
from two or more races.
Hispanic or
Latino of any race were 12.23% of the
population.
There were 18,530 households out of which 42.2% had children under
the age of 18 living with them, 59.5% were
married couples living together, 11.9% had a female
householder with no husband present, and 23.6% were non-families.
17.6% of all households were made up of individuals and 4.3% had
someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average
household size was 3.09 and the average family size was 3.52.
In the city the population was spread out with 30.7% under the age
of 18, 14.7% from 18 to 24, 28.9% from 25 to 44, 19.5% from 45 to
64, and 6.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was
28 years. For every 100 females there were 100.1 males. For every
100 females age 18 and over, there were 97.3 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $47,236, and the
median income for a family was $51,553. Males had a median income
of $34,947 versus $24,801 for females. The
per capita income for the city was
$17,812. About 4.5% of families and 5.9% of the population were
below the
poverty line, including 7.0%
of those under age 18 and 6.0% of those age 65 or over.
See also
References
- "Camp Kearns". Davidson, Lee. Deseret News, 20 Jul 2008
External links
Redwood campus in Taylorsville
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