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Call them the forgotten "cities."
They have main drags. They have parks. They have civic boards. They have homes. In fact, their combined population approaches 100,000 people.
In short, they walk and talk like cities. But they aren't. They're townships, and Salt Lake County boasts six of them - Copperton, Emigration, Kearns, Magna, Millcreek and White City - each with a distinct history and identity.
Once a month until year's end, The Salt Lake Tribune will profile one of these townships. We begin this series with Copperton, a place that traces its roots to the days of ore.
COPPERTON - The past is not easily forgotten in this old mining town, where rain gutters streak copper green and neighborhoods date to pre-Depression days.
History still looms large in the man-made mountainside to the west, in the sprawling community park that stretches nearly a Salt Lake City block and in decades-old neighborhoods where plumbing, wiring and even a few remaining shingles are still made of copper.
But times have changed for this former company town.
Gone are the days of industry-owned homes, when Utah Copper Co. provided families new wallpaper and paint every three to four years and a tree on their doorsteps every Christmas.
Gone are the days when mining was the town's main occupation. The community now is filled with nurses, mechanics, paralegals and schoolteachers who make their homes in Copperton and their careers elsewhere in the Salt Lake Valley.
Yet Copperton, one of six townships in the county, remains old at heart.
Postmaster Russ Ray spent his childhood in a company home. He remembers the transition years in the mid-1950s, when Utah Copper's successor, Kennecott Copper, sold houses for as little as $3,200.
Retired teacher Dorothy Peterson keeps a weathered brick in her living room - a reminder of the now-demolished Bingham High, where she once worked. A placard reads, "Home of the Miners."
And Cal Crump continues to care for Copperton Community Park, carved in 1926 when Utah Copper decided to make a town at the base of Bingham Canyon. He has trimmed hedges, fixed sprinklers and clipped grass for the past 48 years.
This population of about 700 has fallen in love with Copperton, keeping alive a community that has become a sought-after suburb on the valley's southwestern fringe.
From the dust
Out of the mines of Bingham Canyon came Copperton, a bedroom community built for Utah Copper executives and foremen.
It began with 18 houses, completed in company style with copper roofs, rain gutters and plumbing for less than $6,000 apiece, according to a history by Crump's son, former resident Scott Crump.
Then came the park, designed as a centerpiece to this cradle community with expansive flower beds and abundant pines. It sprouted with Chinese elm, cottonwood, birch, maple and weeping willows.
Year after year, construction continued. By 1930, Utah Copper had built 131 homes on the flats below Bingham Canyon. And more people were banging at the door, according to historian Crump. The company received an estimated 250 housing applications a year.
But Copperton slumped during the Depression. It sweated with labor demands during World War II. And it changed forever Dec. 16, 1955, when Utah Copper's new owner, Kennecott, announced it was scrapping the housing business.
The community suddenly became private when Kennecott unloaded homes for $3,249 to $6,839 each - in many cases cheaper than the construction price almost three decades before, Crump records.
Since then, Copperton has changed little. And, for the most part, remains a forgotten sliver of Salt Lake County.
"A lot of people still don't know we are here, which is nice," said Kathy Randall, a 12-year resident and community hairdresser. "It is a little bit of heaven."
Business bust
Copperton is no boomtown for business - except for mining, which tapped into one of the world's richest supplies of copper in the open pit two miles west of town.
Shoppers stray east for groceries, retail and entertainment. Many favor the Jordan Landing shopping complex seven miles away in West Jordan.
Copperton's Ore House Saloon still attracts customers. So does a credit union and Hawaiian eatery. Other entrepreneurs are on their way out.
Joe Buhler, owner of the Copperton Trading Post, has spent a lifetime eking out a living along the town's main drag. He has watched service stations, a grocery store and cafes come and go the past 40 years.
And, yet, he still is in business. At one time, he was the only remaining retailer.
But times have been tough for Buhler's antique store. When Kennecott shut down Bingham Canyon to visitors in the late 1990s - moving the entrance several miles south on Highway 111 - tourism nearly dried up. So did business.
Buhler now has announced his retirement. He has put his shop up for sale and slashed the price of his inventory - a collection that includes relics such as a payroll slip from 1903 showing a Kennecott worker making $3.50 a shift.
He doesn't regret his career in the shadow of the Oquirrh Mountains.
"I've survived 40 years," he said. "What more can you ask? I don't remember ever getting up in the morning and hating to go to work."
Secret garden
The jewel of this southwestern suburb is a tree-canopied park in the heart of town, where 78-year-old groundskeeper Cal Crump is as recognizable as the arched entryways, thick-trunked pines and central pavilion that have served as Copperton's social hub for decades.
Crump doesn't move as fast as he used to - these days he shuttles to broken sprinklers and fallen tree branches in a white golf cart - but he doesn't see a sunset to his service yet.
Frankly, he is scared to leave.
"You hate to say things like this," he said. "But the guy that takes over - I don't know whether he is going to maintain [the park] the way I would like it taken care of."
Crump's park has become a popular destination for solitude-seekers countywide - perhaps Copperton's biggest attraction for outsiders.
That's where "Smokey" Franks, of Kearns, celebrated his 85th birthday this month with a picnic dinner and air-pump rockets. He visits the park twice a week, saying there is nothing like it in the county.
"It is like a Shangri-La," said his daughter, Magna resident Lanna Swensen. "It is so close - and yet so far."
It's where 82 summer campers converged during a Kearns Recreation Center outing - their orange shirts swarming over its pyramidal playground.
"The secret is out," said township representative Gary Curtis. "It is a gem of a park."
Down the road
The population is turning in Copperton. Children's bicycles and skateboards are appearing more frequently along the streets.
But aside from a new subdivision on the north end and a traffic signal at Highway 111 and New Bingham Highway - the chief intersection before reaching Copperton - big-city life remains miles away.
That's how many residents like it.
Just ask John Bendowski, who migrated here in the early 1970s. He paused outside the post office, reminisced briefly about days when a bean field grew in the place of two new streets and then pointed to a railroad bridge on the east side of town.
"I'd like to have a guard shack where that bridge is," he said, "and make [Copperton] a special community where you have to get permission to come in."