An open stretch of the Salt Lake Valley

Copper mining and a trapper killing shaped South Jordan

You're standing in South Jordan, about half a mile from the Kennecott Utah Copper headquarters. The company is one of the biggest names in Utah mining, and its roots run back more than a century.

The Bingham Canyon copper mining industry started with a man named Enos Andrew Wall. A decade later, Samuel Newhouse and Thomas Weir formed the Boston Consolidated Mining Company to work the same ground.

That same year, a smelter went up at Garfield to process the ore. The mine grew into the Bingham Canyon Mine, now one of the largest open pits ever dug by human hands.

Today it still produces about 8% of the copper used in the United States every year, pulled from a hole in the ground you can see from miles away.

In October 1824, a trapping party of 15 men led by Étienne Provost was attacked and killed along the Jordan River north of Utah Lake, in what later became the South Jordan area. The attack came in revenge for an earlier incident involving other trappers.

The South Jordan Cemetery was the first organized burying ground west of the Jordan River in Salt Lake County. Its first burial took place on September 9, 1863, when John A. Bills, a two-month-old infant, died and was laid to rest there.

In 1938, a school bus collided with a train in South Jordan, killing multiple passengers. A memorial monument to the victims was later placed at the South Jordan Cemetery.

A medical building rose on old Kennecott mining land

In 2012, builders raised a medical building at West Daybreak Parkway, on a lot platted as part of the Kennecott Daybreak University Medical subdivision. It opened as the South Jordan Health Center, standing where you are now. The land passed from Kennecott's old mining ground into a planned community of hospitals, homes, and a ballpark.

The Rose Crest Fire was declared for Salt Lake County in 2012.

An earthquake and its aftershocks were declared for Salt Lake County in 2020.

The Parleys Canyon Fire was declared for Salt Lake County in 2021.

Straight-line winds were declared a disaster for Salt Lake County in 2021.