Cottonwood Heights
Cottonwood Heights is located on a large sandbar left over from the ancient Lake Bonneville that filled the Salt Lake Valley centuries ago. It is located between the two most majestic features along the Wasatch Front Big and Little Cottonwood Canyons. This sandbar rises hundreds of feet above the valley floor. On the North it tapers gently to the valley floor allowing a gradual, nearly nondescript access from the lower to the higher ground.
Because it was high and very dry, the earliest settlements in the area were located along the Little Cottonwood Creek, which lay will below the South and West bluff sides. It was along this creek that the old Union Fort was built (the first settlement in the area behind the Wal Mart Store) to accommodate the first day’s travel for wagons carrying block from the quarry in Little Cottonwood Canyon to build the Salt Lake Temple.
Since water is always critical to the development of an area, the top flatland of the sandbar was too dry and desolate to attract settlers. And while the Little Cottonwood creek was the closest, it was also the least available because of the high bluff. It was apparently this problem that earned this particular portion of Cottonwood Heights its first name Poverty Flats. Water was then brought from the Big Cottonwood creek down from the mouth of the canyon to enable farms and orchards to be established where we now live. Early settlers established small farms producing hay, wheat and a variety of vegetable crops. Yet, the area was most widely known for its fruit production: even to the marketing of the fruit out-of-state.
While the name Poverty Flats continues, the undaunted families who settled here went on to produce an inordinate number of college graduates in law, business, medicine, engineering and education. The name was changed from Poverty Flats to Butlerville and then changed when the area became a part of a larger community now known as Cottonwood Heights.
In 2007, Money magazine rated Cottonwood Heights at #100 on their Best Places to Live list.