W.V. celebrates 25 years on map

WEST VALLEY CITY — Seventy-two people were all it took to make Utah's second-largest city a reality.

Well, 72 people and years of planning, campaigning and organizing.

Today, West Valley City turns 25 years old, but its July 1,1980, incorporation came with a fair share of controversy. Just a week after the city came into existence, there was a drive to take it off the map.

But on the map it stayed, and the past 25 years have been a study in the ups and downs of trying to make one city out of what once was a loose collection of unincorporated communities, haphazardly planned and desperate for more cohesive services.

Today, West Valley's city leaders and residents say it has been worth the effort.

Where it started

In the 1940s and 1950s, postwar urbanization hit the Wasatch Front, spurring growth and expansion here just as it did across the nation. The west-side communities of Granger and Hunter were no exception.

These townships had, until the war, been nothing more than small farming enclaves, established in the 1870s. But suddenly Salt Lake County found itself facing unprecedented growth, growth that needed some structure.

So, according to the West Valley City Civic Committee's 1993 book, "Let's Do It: West Valley City's Official Early History," the county government began implementing planning and zoning ordinances. But the book's authors say those ordinances were mainly focused on controlling growth on the valley's east side.

"The perception was widespread that county government was dominated by east-side interests who were bent on assuring that they and their neighbors had homes on large lots, on well-paved streets, with nice parks nearby in which their children could play," the book's authors wrote. "The west side of the Jordan River, the common conception continued, was a 'dumping ground' for less-desirable development — small-lot subdivisions, high-density apartment complexes, inadequately built and maintained streets and few parks and recreation facilities."

But if the county was paying more attention to Millcreek than Hunter, it wasn't because the west side lacked growth. In 1975, Hunter replaced West Jordan as Salt Lake Valley's fastest-growing community.

Time was ripe?

Incorporation advocates, according to "Let's Do It," wanted "to take charge of their own affairs after decades of second-rate treatment by Salt Lake County."