State Street (Salt Lake County)
State Street is a wide 17.3-mile-long (27.8 km) street in Salt Lake County, Utah leading almost straight south from the steps of the Utah State Capitol Building, through Salt Lake City (including Downtown Salt Lake City), South Salt Lake, Millcreek, Murray (including the Murray Downtown Historic District), eastern Midvale, Sandy (including the Sandy Historic District and downtown Sandy), and northwestern Draper.
Because it follows the most direct route from downtown Salt Lake City to the Point of the Mountain pass to Utah County, it was the undisputed main road south from Salt Lake City until Interstate 15 (I-15) was built to the west (but closely paralleling it).
It retains the U.S. Highway 89 (US 89) designation for all but the northernmost seven blocks (which are part of State Route 186 (SR 186) instead) despite I-15's proximity.
Other than along a portion of its length in Midvale and southern Murray that is currently (as of 2012) being rebuilt and widened to match the rest, the entire length of State Street south of South Temple has sidewalks on both sides and is a uniform six lanes in width plus either a center turn lane or (occasionally) a low median barrier.
The street climbs a small hill to pass over the Jordan and Salt Lake Canal, then passes a cemetery and a small amount of undeveloped greenfield land near the crossing of Dry Creek before reaching a larger hill into which the East Jordan Canal is carved.
At Fort Union Boulevard (7200 South), State Street enters a denser commercial corridor with strip malls along a large portion of the route until the border with Murray and starts to curve very slightly to the east.
Similar to the northern end of Midvale's segment, State Street south of Interstate 215 in Murray is mostly surrounded by strip malls and a mixture of other small specialized retail businesses.
It passes the Desert Star Theater, the Warenski-Duvall Commercial Building and Apartments, and other traditional zero-setback buildings with ground floor retail while running just west of the Murray Downtown Residential Historic District, then intersects 4800 South (former State Route 174, also known as Murray-Holladay Road east of State Street and Murray-Taylorsville Road west of State Street) less than two blocks north of the Vine Street intersection.
[1] Millcreek Township's short portion of State Street includes a mixture of small-scale retail and car dealerships similar to the adjacent parts of Murray and South Salt Lake.
State Street is spanned by the Eagle Gate just north of South Temple, next to the Beehive House and Brigham Young Complex.
Beyond North Temple, State Street suddenly narrows and begins climbing Capitol Hill.
State Street north of Vine Street in Murray was used as part of the route for wagons carrying quartz monzonite quarried at the mouth of Little Cottonwood Canyon for use in building the Salt Lake Temple, until railroads provided an easier route.
When the U.S. Highway system was unveiled in 1926, state street carried US-91 through the Salt Lake Valley.
State Street originally continued south of its current terminus along the route now used by I-15: it continued straight south along the Salt Lake Meridian until turning to run along the Utah Southern Railroad right-of-way, which is now owned by the Utah Transit Authority (UTA) and proposed for use in phase two of the UTA's TRAX Blue Line, around Point of the Mountain.
From the time that I-15 was built until around the year 2000, State Street's vehicle lanes connected directly to I-15 at the point at which I-15 came into alignment with the Salt Lake Meridian, but this north-south-only connection was eliminated as I-15 was rebuilt in favor of an omnidirectional exit at SR-71 just to the south because of increasing development on all sides.
