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Counties

29 COUNTIES

A county is a small region of the state. Each county has its own landscapes, towns, industries, resources, and communities. Counties have a local government that helps provide roads, emergency responders, water, libraries, parks, and many other things that help the people who live there. Explore Utah’s twenty-nine counties below.

Counties

29 COUNTIES

A county is a small region of the state. Each county has its own landscapes, towns, industries, resources, and communities. Counties have a local government that helps provide roads, emergency responders, water, libraries, parks, and many other things that help the people who live there. Explore Utah’s twenty-nine counties below.

Beaver

The fertile valleys of Beaver County are watered by streams from the Tushar Mountains, home to some of the highest peaks in the state.

Box Elder

The nation's first transcontinental railroad was finished in Box Elder County. This county is now home to vital industries such as aerospace engineering, ranching, and orchards.

Cache

Fur trappers once used this fertile valley to store pelts and supplies, hiding them for safe-keeping. The French word cache (say "cash") means hiding place.

Carbon

At the north and west, the high alpine mountains of the Wasatch Plateau slope down eastward into desert country of sagebrush, pinyon and juniper. The Price River, which gets its start on the plateau, cuts through Castle Valley.

Daggett

Daggett County, Utah’s smallest in population, sits on the north slope of the Uinta Mountains, right up against Wyoming and Colorado.

Davis

The small county of Davis lies sandwiched between the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake. The county boundary swings out into the lake to include the starkly beautiful Antelope Island.

Duchesne

The wild and rugged Uinta Mountains rise up in the north part of Duchesne County—so the county can claim the state’s highest mountain, King’s Peak.

Emery

Emery County is in the Colorado Plateau province—and it includes three different kinds of landscape. The high, cool, forested mountains of the Wasatch Plateau rise to the west.

Garfield

Garfield County is a land of colorful variety: high mountain plateaus, steep mesas, cliffs, slickrock, rock formations, gorges, natural bridges and arches, canyons, dry foothills and desert expanses.

Grand

Grand County is classic Colorado Plateau country. In the north lie sparse deserts and the rugged Book Cliffs. The spectacular Gray Canyon and Labyrinth Canyon of the Green River form the county’s western edge.

Iron

Iron County is a study in contrast—from the arid Escalante Desert and Great Basin ranges in the west to the meadows and forests of the High Plateaus on the east.

Juab

Juab County is a part of the Basin and Range physiographic province. Most of its fertile farming land lies in the Juab Valley near Nephi at the base of Mount Nebo.

Kane

The high desert landscape of Kane County belongs to the Colorado Plateau geographical province. In Kane County you can find towering sandstone cliffs, deep canyons, plateaus, mountains, and lots of sand.

Millard

Millard County doesn’t get much rain. So the flat areas have alkaline soil and sparse vegetation—except where water from the Sevier River makes alfalfa fields green and lush.

Morgan

Located in valleys east of the Wasatch Front, Morgan County is divided by the steep and rocky Weber Canyon, now the route of Interstate 84. Fifteen major streams empty into the Weber, so the county is well watered.

Piute

Thirty million years ago, volcanoes began to erupt in what is now Piute County. For 25 million years, volcanoes exploded or oozed every now and then—laying down 10,000 feet of volcanic rock.

Rich

This narrow county in northern Utah is 18 miles wide and 56 miles long. It shares the beautiful Bear Lake valley with Idaho. The Bear River flows into Rich County from its headwaters in Wyoming's Uinta Mountains.

Salt Lake

The fertile Salt Lake Valley lies between the Wasatch Mountains on the east, with their steep mountains and deep canyons, and the Oquirrh Mountains on the west.

San Juan

San Juan County, in the heart of the Colorado Plateau, is a big country of mesas, gorges, canyons, cliffs, high desert plains, and astonishing rock formations.

Sanpete

Sanpete County straddles the Colorado Plateau and the Great Basin. On the east, creeks on the eastern slopes of the high Wasatch Plateau drain into the Colorado River system.

Sevier

Sevier County lies in the High Plateau country of central Utah. Most of the towns lie near the Sevier River in an arid valley, which has been made fertile through irrigation.

Summit

With the Wasatch and Uinta mountains and high mountain valleys between, this county really is Utah’s summit.

Tooele

Tooele County is Basin and Range country. Most of its towns lie in a broad valley between the mineral-rich Oquirrh Mountains on the east and the Onaqui and Stansbury Mountains to the west.

Uintah

Uintah County, with tall alpine mountains to the north and dry, broken landscape to the south, sits in the Uinta Basin. Part of the Basin lies in western Colorado.

Utah

The most dramatic geographical features of Utah County are the Wasatch Mountains that rise to the east. But Utah Lake and the Provo River were valued for centuries for their plentiful fish and game.

Wasatch

Wasatch County is often called Utah’s Switzerland, because of the rugged beauty of Mount Timpanogos overlooking Heber Valley, the green meadows and streams, the cool climate, and the Swiss immigrants who settled Midway in the 1800s.

Washington

Red sandstone, red soil, dark pine-covered mountains, lava flows, cliffs and canyons, cottonwood-lined streams and rivers, rolling dry country of mesquite and Joshua trees—these are some of the images of Washington County.

Wayne

Wayne County lies within the colorful Colorado Plateau province. Much of the beautiful Capitol Reef and Canyonlands National Parks, with their rock formations, cliffs, canyons, and valleys, lies in the county.

Weber

Weber County includes a wide swatch of land running from the Wasatch Mountains on the east to the Great Salt Lake on the west. Marshes and shorelines along the lake attract birds.