Salt Lake City geography · Geography in Salt Lake City
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Geography in Salt Lake City
Geography in Salt Lake City
When traveling to the city, knowledge of Salt Lake's famous grid system is a big plus. The entire valley lies on the same grid system. Most major streets are laid out precisely running north-south or east-west. The origin of the grid is located downtown, on the south-east corner of Temple Square. Street addresses are coordinates within the grid system in intervals of 100 every street. For example, one might speak of the intersection of 700 East and 2100 South as either "seventh east and twenty-first south" or "seven hundred east and twenty-one hundred south" (remember that in conversations, locals usually opt for the first one; try not to get confused between say, 7th East and 21st South and 7 East and 21 South, both of which are very different addresses). Addresses are specific numbers, such as 840 South 1300 East ("Eight-Fourty south 13th east"). Downtown blocks are 1/8 of a mile in length, but blocks become more irregularly spaced farther from the city center. Most people will recognize the grid as one they studied in school, with a point of origin and 4 quadrants. After getting used to the system, you will find that it is very easy to navigate and simple to understand, although the streets become more and more irregular the farther south you move. It can also get confusing outside of the Salt Lake Valley, where many cities (whether or not they've grown into each other) often have separate systems, so that a single road that divides two cities may have two different names for the grid systems of the two different cities. A different grid variant is found in the North East corner of Salt Lake City and is known as The Avenues. The Avenues are composed of North-south avenues which are lettered, A through U, while east-west avenues are numbered 1 though 14.
Significant neighborhoods in SLC include Downtown, the financial core that's home to Temple Square (the main temple of the Mormon church); Central City, the main residential area of the city, approximately 400 South to 900 South; Sugar House, a commercial/residential district with many funky shops; Federal Heights, an affluent district to the northeast; The Avenues a historical neighborhood with many old buildings; University, the area surrounding the sprawling University of Utah campus and the adjacent VA Medical Center, Research Park, and Fort Douglas; East Bench or Foothill, a residential area bisected by the major arterial road Foothill Boulevard between 900 South and I-80; Capitol Hill, an affluent district just north of Downtown topped by the Utah State Capitol building; Rose Park a residential in the northwest section of the city; and Glendale a residential, primarily Hispanic district to the southwest, home to the International Peace Gardens. The benches are the mostly residential, upper-class communities constructed mostly along the slopes of the Wasatch Mountains on the east side of the valley, although they have recently been growing in the southern valley (the low Traverse Mountains) and the western valley (the Oquirrh Mountains). The east side is traditionally more affluent and conservative than the west side, leading to the expected "cultural rivalries" that you find in other cities with clear divides, although this divide is arguably less pronounced in Salt Lake City than in most major cities.
The Wasatch Front is the region located along the western edge of the Wasatch Mountain Range. It stretches from approximately Brigham City on the north to Santaquin on the south, and includes Ogden, Salt Lake City, and Provo. More than two-thirds of Utah's population are located in this region. One thing to realize is that when people speak of Salt Lake City, they are often referring to Salt Lake Valley as a whole, or at least the suburbs adjoining Salt Lake City immediately to the south. Significant suburbs of Salt Lake City include Sandy (in the southern half of the valley), Murray and Midvale (in the center of the valley), West Valley City and West Jordan (large suburbs immediately to the southwest), and Holladay, which although it only contains a small section of the eastern bench area, is often used to define the entire east bench area (often used colloquially with "Cottonwood"). "Millcreek" is used to define areas a little further north on the east bench and adjacent to Salt Lake City and south of I-80.
People who fly into Salt Lake City to visit the national parks and wild terrain of Southern Utah should keep in mind that just because they're in the same state does not mean they are close; in most cases, Las Vegas is actually closer to the parks. Many of them are about a 5 hour drive away from Salt Lake City.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Salt Lake City
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Salt Lake City Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.