Biohazard and Crime Scene Remediation in Riverton, UT

Riverton is a city in Salt Lake County, Utah, in the rapidly growing southwestern corner of the Salt Lake Valley, about twenty miles south and slightly west of Salt Lake City.

The area was first settled by people of European descent in the mid-1850s, scattered along the river bottom in crude dugout homes, and the town was originally referred to as Gardnerville, possibly for Archibald Gardner, before changing its name to Riverton for the Jordan River.

Riverton's initial growth was slow because of a lack of water for irrigation, but three canals were eventually built to extend water from the nearby Jordan River to the benchland areas, and the town prospered as an agricultural community by World War I.

Riverton was incorporated as a city in 1947, and its population more than tripled between 1970, when it totaled 2,820 inhabitants, and the mid-1980s, when it reached around 10,000.

As of the 2020 census, Riverton had a population of 45,285 and 12,794 households, with a median age of 31.9 years.

Riverton farmers moved from self-sufficient farming to commercial specialties including alfalfa, wheat, sugar beets, tomatoes, poultry, sheep, and dairy cows, and early businesses included the Page-Pixon department store and the Jordan Valley Bank, started in 1905 as a community bank.

Electricity first came to Riverton in 1912, and the Salt Lake and Utah Railroad, known as the Orem Line, ran through Riverton west of Redwood Road from 1914 to 1945 as a commuter and freight line from Salt Lake to Payson.

The community's first school had only one room in the old adobe meetinghouse, a new two-story brick schoolhouse was built in 1892 and 1893, and after a fire destroyed the school on July 30, 1926, the rebuilt structures eventually became the Riverton Elementary School complex, renovated by 2005-06 into the Riverton Community Center and City Hall.

Riverton's city boundaries were in flux from incorporation until 2000, and a 1996 annexation of land toward Herriman virtually doubled the physical size of the city.

Public education in Riverton is provided by the Jordan School District, with Riverton High School, Oquirrh Hills and South Hills middle schools, and six elementary schools, plus the Kauri Sue Hamilton School for students with special needs.