Location in Salt Lake County and the state of Utah.
Location in Salt Lake County and the state of Utah.
Taylorsville is a town/city in Salt Lake County, Utah, United States.
It is part of the Salt Lake City, Utah Metropolitan Statistical Area.
The region called Taylorsville today is made up of three historic communities in the central part of Salt Lake County: Taylorsville, Bennion, and Kearns.
The town/city officially became the City of Taylorsville amid the centennial anniversary of Utah's statehood in 1996.
The territory on which Taylorsville is positioned 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.
The inactive Taylorsville Fault has been traced down the center of the Salt Lake Valley.
Some of this region's first titled visitors were Fremont citizens who used the region to hunt and gather food along the Jordan River more than a thousand years ago.
A large Fremont settlement on City Creek used the territory where Taylorsville is positioned 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 region was dry sagebrush-covered territory without any natural water sources except the Jordan River.
The whole region was called "Teguayo" and "Lake Copalla" (Utah Lake) appear on maps of Spanish Nuevo Mexico. Spanish and then Mexican territory 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 several thousand Mormon pioneer who had taken up residence in July 1847.
The first Mormon pioneer settlers, Joseph and Susanna Harker from England assembled 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.
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 territory on the west side.
The continuing crickets finished 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.
In January 1852 Harker's Settlement was ordered as a part of the West Jordan LDS Ward that encompassed the Salt Lake Valley west of the Jordan River.
In the 1853 the continued threat of attack by angry Utes, locally called the "Walker War" or the "Utah Valley War", forced the pioneer to build an 2-acre (8,100 m2) adobe fort called the English Fort just north of the North Jordan Burying Ground in 1854.
Gunnison and his surveying party caused such fear that Salt Lake City fortified itself.
Between 1853 and 1857 Gardner's Millrace was extended north to the Bennion region and called the North Jordan Canal, the first meaningful canal on the west side of the Jordan River. The first postal service 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 home guard who remained behind to watch over the settlement observed "Johnston's Army" camp the first evening after passing through Salt Lake on the "flats' above the North Jordan farms.
It was decided to build a log school on top of the "hill" on 4800 South which was closer to where most citizens in Taylorsville lived. In 1859 the West Jordan Ward encompassed all of Salt Lake County west of the Jordan River and even had a section east of the river.
The North Jordan dependent branch of the West Jordan stake was ordered in 1859.
The region 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.
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 territory from South Jordan to Granger under cultivation.
A several families moved just north of Taylorsville near 6200 South and Redwood Road.
John Bennion, one of the early settlers, gave this region its name, Bennion.
In the 1880s LDS Church president, John Taylor, hid from US marshals at a home on the west side of the Jordan River near 4800 South.
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 assembled which allowed irrigation farming to grew even farther west above the river between Bluffdale and Granger.
The Bennion brothers assembled a grist foundry at 4800 South and the Jordan River.
In 1894 a three-room school home was assembled out of red brick, called the 64 District School.
The beets were hauled to the West Jordan cutting station until 1916 when the West Jordan Sugar Factory was completed.
In 1894 the Taylorsville LDS Meetinghouse was assembled to home the Taylorsville Ward of the LDS church.
In December 1904 the Salt Lake County Commission voted to combine 22 of the 36 small-town school districts into the Granite School District with boundaries that matched the LDS Granite Stake boundaries.
In 1905 600 citizens lived in Bennion, enough to split from the Taylorsville LDS Ward and problematic the Bennion Ward to the south.
Meetings were held in the red brick schoolhouse for a time until the Bennion meetinghouse was assembled 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 enhance schools throughout Utah gave rise to the old Plymouth Elementary School on Redwood Road and 4800 South.
By 1907 there were so many kids in the Bennion school that the upper grades were sent to the two-story red brick Plymouth School in Taylorsville.
In 1913 the electric Salt Lake Inter-Urban, often call the "Orem Line," was assembled 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.
A line alongside to the base meridian was surveyed on the west side of the Jordan River for use in measuring property lines.
It remained the Redwood Line until 1895 when Redwood Road was assembled as a chief thoroughfare for the west side of Salt Lake County.
The territory originally was part of a federal territory grant to the state of Utah to be used to benefit schools and universities in Utah.
Camp Kearns went through renamings as the focus and mission of the base changed; Camp Kearn was the name which stuck.
The base was titled 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 inhabitants and was Utah's third biggest city at the time.
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 existence of clean drinking water and a sewage treatment plant made it possible for citizens to move to Kearns and live in some of the first large subdivisions assembled in Salt Lake County in the 1950s.
Taylorsville and Bennion joined to form their own water and sewage district to furnish clean water.
The large water tank on the hill at 3200 west and 6200 South and the other ones buried inside the hill are a part of the work to furnish the clean water.
Salt Lake County's quickly growing populace began expanding west in the early 1970s and farmers found they could sell their territory to developers for a lot more than they were making on the farms.Subdivisions began springing up.
Taylorsville, Bennion, and Kearns continued rapid expansion into the early 1990s.
Some citizens felt that the Salt Lake County Commission, which governed the area, was allowing too much expansion too fast, especially apartment complexes.
The county seemed unwilling to listen to inhabitants which resulted in the first drive to incorporate Taylorsville City.
In 1995 voters allowed the creation of a new town/city due to the rising costs of county services, a feeling that the county was not giving inhabitants their cash'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 inhabitants were upset when Taylorsville's proposed boundary extended its border all the way to 4000 West which was considered by inhabitants in that region to be part of Kearns.
Most of Kearns residents, if only given the choice to incorporate into other cities, would choose to turn into a part of Taylorsville.
Taylorsville's nickname is "Utah's Centennial City" because it officially came into existence one hundred years after Utah became a state.
Taylorsville is governed by a five-member town/city council, mayor and presiding judge representing the legislative, executive and judicial chapters of government.
Anime Banzai, Utah's first anime convention and biggest fan convention, held at the Salt Lake Community College Redwood ground in Taylorsville (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1941) p.
West Valley City South Salt Lake Municipalities and communities of Salt Lake County, Utah, United States
Categories:
Wasatch Front - Cities in Utah - Former census-designated places in Utah - Populated places established in 1848 - Salt Lake City urbane region - Taylorsville, Utah
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