WEST VALLEY CITY — Renovations at Salt Lake County's Records Management and Archives facility will allow researchers and residents to view records in the building where they are stored. The old procedure required that people first put in requests at another county office.

At an open house Monday to celebrate the renovation's completion, Salt Lake County Mayor Peter Corroon noted the importance of preserving historic records and having a safe, environmentally controlled facility for keeping them. The building was purchased by the county in 1994, and the renovation added a reference room, archives-processing room, multi-purpose room and three offices.

The facility at 4505 S. 5600 West, holds about 28,000 cubic feet of county government records. The documents are used by real estate agents, environmental historians, genealogists, people doing home restoration and others who just want to know what their homes used to look like, according to a county news release.

The archives include documents dating from Utah's territorial days to the present. Birth certificates, death records and land titles are preserved at the facility. Some records go back as far as 1847, with digitized death records of Utah's early pioneers.

The renovated facility allows the county to consolidate its staff at one location and streamline their efforts, said Terry Ellis, director of the county's Records Management and Archives. Previously, people seeking records had to stop by the county office at 2001 S. State to request records stored at the West Valley facility.

The consolidation and renovation at the storage site eliminates the potentially hazardous need to transport the records, Ellis said.

Now, researchers and residents must call in advance to see if the facility has the records they are seeking and set up an appointment to use the new reference room, which was added as part of the building's renovation.

For more information, contact Salt Lake County Archives by calling 801-963-7330 or by e-mail at archives@slco.org.

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