SARATOGA SPRINGS — Pony Express Parkway, a road that wends through the striking sagebrush hillsides and stucco-and-brick housing of Eagle Mountain, now stretches to Redwood Road.
On a section of roadway that 150 years ago was a dirt trail for horses, riders and mail dashing along the Pony Express trail, several dozen city officials in Saratoga Springs and Eagle Mountain celebrated the opening of a 2.8-mile, $3.5 million stretch of pavement that will alter the way modern settlers of northwest Utah County will travel.
"The only thing that will be more exciting than this is when Pioneer Crossing opens," Eagle Mountain Mayor Heather Jackson said, referring to another east-west route that Pony Express Parkway drivers can enter from Redwood Road about a half-mile from where Pony Express Parkway ends.
Pioneer Crossing, slated to open in August, will dump traffic onto I-15 at Main Street in American Fork.
Although a pavement version of Pony Express Parkway has existed for about a decade as a main drag in Eagle Mountain, it stopped near the Saratoga Springs city line. Where the parkway ended, drivers exited onto Lehi-Fairview Road, an old county lane that was considered unsafe in winter but took drivers to 800 West, and eventually onto state Route 73.
For residents in Eagle Mountain, state Route 73 had been the only way out of town.
Thoroughfares out of town have been a problem for Eagle Mountain and Saratoga Springs residents as the cities have grown. Today, the two northwest Utah County cities have 39,000 residents combined. For years, people have wanted to extend Pony Express Parkway to Redwood Road.
"The issue was getting funding for the road," Jackson said.
The money came from the Mountainland Association of Governments and Utah County.
"I'm sure we're going to have lots of roads that need to be built in the next 50, 60 years," said Saratoga Springs Mayor Mia Love.
Along both sides of the new stretch of roadway are flat, green grazing fields. Beyond that are hills and sagebrush.
But the landscape may not remain that way for long.
"We've already seen some development," said Mark Edwards, the road's project manager and Saratoga Spring's capital facilities manager. "There's an elementary (school) that will be near here. It's that old saying: If you build it, they will come."
e-mail: lhancock@desnews.com