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Davis County - sandwiched between the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountains - has the smallest land mass of the state's 29 counties. Yet now it ranks as the third most populous.

Once rich in farmland, the conduit between Weber and Salt Lake counties is filling with rooftops, roads and strip malls.

"Without question, we're changing very rapidly" - because of urbanization along the Wasatch Front, says Kent Sulser, the county's economic-development manager.

''Land use will be the driver of how many new jobs we can help create,'' Sulser says. ''If we don't manage the growth, it will all go to rooftops.''

Residential growth has flooded northwest Davis County for more than a decade, fields and barns giving way to subdivisions.

''We've more than doubled in size since I've been here,'' says Dennis Cluff, Clinton's city manager since 1994.

From 2000 to 2005, its population jumped from 12,585 to 18,436.

DeMar Mitchell, Clinton's mayor from 1994 to 2002, remembers his boyhood there in the 1930s.

''Every street was a dirt road, and at one time, there were only 26 homes,'' Mitchell says. ''I could name every home and where it was at - I knew every resident in town.''

Those days are gone, acknowledged Mitchell. And 80 percent of his family's 25-acre farm has sprouted houses.

At age 80, Mitchell still farms; this year he'll grow Indian corn to sell during the fall holidays.

He also serves on the Utah Transit Authority's board of trustees.

"That's a fun job," he says, happy to be on the cusp of one of the county's foremost challenges.

"Since the growth started, traffic has been the great problem. Thoroughfares were not developed ahead of the population," Mitchell says.

Now efforts have recently ramped up to improve roads, install commuter rail and upgrade other transit options. Absent those, "we'd have to go back to horse and buggy," Mitchell muses.

A traffic nightmare

Syracuse City Councilman Lurlen Knight knows transportation woes firsthand. At rush hour, his commute home from work in downtown Salt Lake City can take up to two hours.

In 1995, Knight moved his family to Syracuse because land was affordable.

"We bought two acres. We wanted to have a few animals and feel like we were in the country," Knight says.

About 9,000 people lived in Syracuse when Knight first got elected to the City Council in 2001.

"Today we're around 24,000," Knight says. "So the farm feel went away pretty fast."

Such rapid growth has stressed the area's country roads and stretched the young city's capacity to provide services.

For example, a 10-block stretch of Antelope Drive needs to be widened from two to four lanes - a job that would cost an estimated $30 million, Knight says.

"Every day traffic is backed up for a few miles - it's a bottleneck."

Providing field space for the city's burgeoning youth-sports programs also has become a constant battle.

"Everywhere there's grass in the city, you'll see games under way," Knight says.

As subdivisions took root, the need for nearby amenities surfaced as well.

A grocery store, so-called "super stores" and fast-food franchises moved in. By Thanksgiving, Syracuse should have its own first-run movie theater as well.

In search of jobs

Looking to the future, other county communities will grow in lopsided fashion if Davis fails to attract enough good-wage jobs.

In landlocked Bountiful, a well-established city at the county's south end, more people are trying to crowd into the same old space, says former City Councilman John Pitt, who heads up the Davis County Chamber of Commerce.

South Davis County narrows where the lake and mountains curve inward. Interstate 15 runs north to south through this section, and at peak travel times, the freeway resembles a parking lot.

"As gridlock worsens in that bottleneck, more are looking to live, work and shop at home" - hence, telecommuting and home businesses are on the rise, Pitt says.

With the recent influx of commercial ventures along 500 West in West Bountiful - a potpourri of restaurants and retail - the city's main arteries are clogging as well.

A case in point, the new Costco store reeled in 70,000 customers last month, Pitt says.

At the same time, hundreds of new housing units, part of the giant Foxboro development, continue to rise in the southwest Davis communities of Woods Cross and North Salt Lake.

"All of that is creating a lot of urban impact and traffic," Pitt says.

Mixed-use developments are key to solving the countywide challenges, says Pitt - "so people don't have to commute, which has been the Davis County habit for decades."

In attracting new employers to the area, Pitt notes that a competitive wage is essential.

"You can get higher wages in Salt Lake City," he says. "People who can open up a professional business do great, but the blue-collar, good-paying jobs are actually moving to other counties right now."

'Putting together a vision'

Several job-generating ideas are being discussed, including two complexes to serve defense-contracting needs for Hill Air Force Base, and a light-industrial center to be built on land in the Clearfield-West Point-Syracuse area.

County Commissioner Louenda Downs, who once lived on land now occupied by Layton Hills Mall, summed up the Davis dilemma.

"We started as an agricultural community, then became a nice bedroom community where people wanted to raise their families while working in Salt Lake City and Ogden - people liked the ambience of the county," Downs says.

"As the county grew, it became more complicated . . . therein lies one of the big challenges: how to hang on to the charm while keeping up with the services."

Hence, the county has launched the beginnings of a 10-year economic-development plan to steer future growth.

"We're putting together a vision," Downs said of the council that will include representatives from each city and the business sector.

That effort kicks off June 28 with a presentation by the University of Utah's Bureau of Economic and Business Research about Davis County's current condition.

"Our hope is to have something finalized by early fall and be ready to share," Downs said. "You need to know where you're at now to know where you want to go."

Economic status

* What: The University of Utah's Bureau of Economic and Business Research will present a report on Davis County's current economic status.

* When: June 28 at 7:30 a.m.

* Where: Davis Conference Center, 800 West Heritage Park Blvd., Layton

Davis County facts

* Size: 304 square miles

* Population: 283,000 (estimate)

* Largest employers: Hill Air Force Base, Davis County School District, Lagoon Corp., Lifetime Products, Smith's Marketplace

* Average household size: 3.3 members

* Average commute time: 22.4 minutes

* Median age: 26.8 years

* High school graduates: 92.2 percent

* College graduates: 28.8 percent

* Average family income: $60,152

* Largest cities: Layton, population 65,242; Bountiful, 44,062

Sources: State Department of Workforce Services, The Economic Development Corporation of Utah