- A new law allows islands of land to possibly become a new city, and Granite community is going down that path.
- Leaders say they want to preserve the feel of the area and be unique from Sandy City.
- Enough signatures have been gathered to determine if it is feasible.
There is a corner on 2700 East in the community of Granite where longhorn cattle graze in one pasture and teenage bison forage in another.
Some residents in Granite — an unincorporated area located in southeast Salt Lake County near the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon — want to preserve the community by becoming a new city. They want to keep the rural and distinct flavor of the area forged by early pioneers mining for the rock to be used in construction of the Salt Lake Temple.
It may only occupy less than a square mile and be the home to fewer than 1,100 residents, but Granite community organizers want to cement its own identity.
Vaughn Cox, chairman of the Granite Community Council, said enough signatures have been gathered to request a feasibility study probing incorporation. The signatures were submitted Monday to the Salt Lake County Clerk’s office and the office of Utah Lt. Gov. Deidre Henderson.
“Granite is the only pioneer community in Salt Lake County that is not part of a larger city,” he said. “The community has a real rural feel with animals, large lots, rural streets and a small town feel to it. The residents want to incorporate to maintain the rural nature of their community.”
The incorporation process
Granite is made up of geographic pockets that are not contiguous — something previously necessary for an incorporation.
But a bill passed into law in 2024 makes it possible for these “islands” of land to petition for incorporation. The law also sets a deadline of July 1, 2027, that says those islands would automatically be annexed into the surrounding city unless they incorporate. A request for a feasibility study is required by May 1 of this year.
“We had to hire a surveyor to create a map of the new city, including a legal description of all the boundaries. We had to raise money to pay for the survey. We had to raise money to hire an attorney, and then we had to get the Utah Population Committee to do a study to make sure we had the appropriate population to incorporate a city. And then we had to get signatures from the property owners that are in the proposed city boundaries. We spent the last 10 months doing all that well,” Cox said.
In 2017, Salt Lake County created townships that include Granite, which gets its services from an entity called the Metropolitan Services District via the county.
Cox said the community felt abandoned by Salt Lake County and is vulnerable to nearby Sandy City which controls their water.
“Everybody in Granite that’s had to deal with Sandy over the years is tired of being bullied by them. So because of this, Granite residents want control over their own land use and planning,” Cox said. “We have an amazing rural community that has a small town feel to it, and we want to maintain that. And we believe that if we are annexed into Sandy City, then we would just become another suburban area of Sandy where they’ll put in multifamily housing.”
Granite has mixed zoning, but some of its lots are a third-acre, half-acre or a full acre, which can accommodate horses and other livestock.
The irony of development
Cox pointed to an 11-acre plot called the Orchards in which housing was proposed.
“Sandy said if you want water to the new homes, then you have to annex into Sandy because we won’t give you the water if you don’t annex,” Cox said. “And so they annexed into Sandy and approved zoning for quarter-acre lots. And the most ironic thing about this is that it borders the Dimple Dell equestrian trails. But there’s not a single lot in the development that can legally have horses because all the lots are too small.”
The Granite community is part of the service area for the provision of water that had to be mapped out due to a constitutional amendment voters approved.
But because Granite remains unincorporated, they are charged different rates for their water and any changes to their water delivery are subject to steep impact fees.
Cox said the tax revenue the Granite community generates now pays for services like police, fire and public works. Incorporation would give the area more control over those services.
If the feasibility study expected to be complete a few months from now says incorporation is possible, that would mean 450 parcels of land and approximately 1,050 residents would have greater say in their community.
Jim Eakins, chairman of the Granite Preservation Committee, said the efforts are to maintain identity for the future while having their roots in the past.
The 1940s gave birth to the Granite Community Civic Committee which governed the area. In the 1970s, when Eakins moved in, there was the Granite Community Council, which served as an advisory body to Salt Lake County.
“We had an identity up here, a social identity with our July Fourth parades and other socials and things throughout the year. There was a special agreement up here of the community banding together,” he said. “And when urbanization started taking hold with its popularity and developers started saying, ‘hey we’ve got land overlooking the valley up here in the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon,’ they started trying to develop land up here. And well, we had to at that time — there was no choice.”
Both Cox and Eakins says a new city restores that voice, and that choice.