The land on which Taylorsville is located is part of an interconnected alluvial plain that was formed by the wearing down of the Wasatch and Oquirrh Mountains to the east and west.

As Lake Bonneville dried up over the past 14,000 years, the salt from the breakdown of rock remains, making the soil alkaline.

A broad, east-west running ridge called "Bennion Hill" rises perhaps a hundred and fifty feet above the surrounding area.

Bennion Hill is the eastern end of a wide ridge that rises toward Farnsworth Peak in the Oquirrh Mountains to the west.

[4] Some of this region's first named visitors were Fremont people who used the area to hunt and gather food along the Jordan River more than a thousand years ago.

A large Fremont settlement on City Creek used the land where Taylorsville is located as hunting and foraging especially along the river.

The first Mormon pioneer settlers, Joseph and Susanna Harker from England built a log cabin on the west side of the Jordan River in November 1848 on what was called then "the Church Farm" near 3300 South.

By working together, eight families managed to bring in the first successful crop in 1851 using water brought down from Bingham Creek by what was later called Gardner's Millrace.

Despite the struggle to get food and shelter in those early days, John Bennion described Field's Bottom in these words: if peace dwells upon this earth it is here and here are the happiest and most prosperous people in the world, enjoying free soil, pure air, liberty to worship our God just as we please… By 1851, more families settled in or near Field's Bottom where they dug the "lower ditch" and cleared land for small farms and pastures.

Stories about "Indian depredations" in Utah and Sanpete Counties and the massacre of John W. Gunnison and his surveying party caused such fear that Salt Lake City fortified itself.

In 1858, the threat of Johnston's Army marching down Emigration Canyon forced many settlers to pack up everything they could and move south until the situation could be resolved.

The home guard who remained behind to watch over the settlement observed the "Johnston's Army" camp the first night after passing through Salt Lake on the "flats" above the North Jordan farms.

Land west of the canals was cleared for dry farms that were planted in the fall and harvested in early summer.

In the 1880s, LDS Church president, John Taylor, hid from United States Marshals Service officers at a home on the west side of the Jordan River near 4800 South.

In 1881, the Utah and Salt Lake Canal was built which allowed irrigation farming to expand even farther west above the river between Bluffdale and Granger.

[10] The territorial legislature passed Utah's first Compulsory Education Law in 1890 which gradually brought most children off the farms and into the classroom.

It had little effect until the early 1900s when small local school districts, seen as a roadblock to raising the standard of Utah education, were consolidated.

Meetings were held in the red brick schoolhouse for a time until the Bennion meetinghouse was built in 1907 at the corner of 6200 South and Redwood Road next to the school.

Redwood Road was finally rebuilt using concrete making it faster and easier to travel for the mixture of automobiles, wagons, and horses that used it.

The United States Department of War bought 5,000 acres (20 km2) of dry farmland in the western part of Salt Lake Valley.

The base was named for Senator Thomas Kearns of Utah, who had made his fortune in the silver mines at Park City.

A camp newspaper called the Valley View News provided information and entertainment to the troops stationed there.

By August 21, 1942, the Kearns had 1,700,000 square feet (160,000 m2) of warehouse space, two all-purpose theaters, gyms, two firehouses, several dusty parade grounds, a post office, a lending library, and a bank.

In time, technical training of air force ground crews became Camp Kearns's main objective.

The Band Wagon Committee raised more than $15,000,000 in war bonds from the communities around Salt Lake and the men and women in uniform.

Salt Lake County's rapidly-growing population began expanding west in the early 1970s and farmers found they could sell their land to developers for a lot more than they were making on the farms.

Some people felt that the Salt Lake County Commission, which governed the area, was allowing too much growth too fast, especially apartment complexes.

In 1995, voters approved the creation of a new city due to the rising costs of county services, a feeling that the county was not giving residents their money's worth revolving around insufficient law enforcement, a lack of input in how Taylorsville and Bennion were developing, and the seemingly unlimited apartment developments.

But residents there approved Taylorsville's incorporation by a significant margin, (as they were given large tax breaks) and that is where the border remains.

The racial makeup of the county was 67.3% non-Hispanic White, 2.2% Black, 0.7% Native American, 4.9% Asian, 1.4% Pacific Islander, and 4.1% from two or more races.