Redwood Road: LOOKING BACK YEARS
Do you remember what Redwood Road was like 50 years ago?
In 1975, Redwood Road was a very different place.
Stretching straight and strong from the Utah County line to North Salt Lake, it was a vital but much simpler roadway — a corridor still catching up with the rapid growth happening all around it.
The origins of its name were already a mystery even then.
One old legend told of federal troops in the 1850s marking the route with redwood planks to guide their way through the valley's heavy snows as they traveled between Camp Floyd and Salt Lake City.
Fifty years ago, parts of Redwood still felt like the countryside.
Some longtime residents remembered when it was just a dusty gravel lane, far preferred over Main Street for traveling north and south without the industrial congestion.
During World War II, it became a lifeline for workers heading to the Remington Arms plant.
By the 1960s and into the 1970s, Redwood Road was booming again, pulsing with traffic from the new aerospace industries, the Salt Lake Airport, and the growing suburban towns of Granger, Hunter, and Kearns.
The landscape along the road reflected both the old and the new:
Cowboy bars and wide fields shared space with small shopping centers and emerging residential neighborhoods.
Traffic lights were few and far between — but that was quickly changing.
Industrial parks and warehouses were just beginning to bud along its edges.
In 1975, business owners like George Anast at Granger Market, built in 1917 near 3500 South, represented the last ties to Redwood’s early days. His store, once the only one for miles, stood firm but faced inevitable change as the road widened and the valley urbanized.
Land values had started to soar.by 1975
Locals knew that Redwood Road’s days as a country route were numbered, even as the first plans to expand it to four lanes were drawn up.
City planners hoped to manage the explosion of growth carefully, aiming to avoid turning Redwood into another congested Main Street — though even then, the pressures of development were impossible to ignore.
Today, in 2025, Redwood Road has become a major artery of West Valley’s economy and transportation system, lined with businesses, homes, and constant movement.
Yet if you close your eyes and listen closely, maybe you can still imagine the echo of a slower, simpler Redwood — where farmers, shopkeepers, and dreamers helped lay the path we travel today.