This week, West Jordan will celebrate its arrival as a "first-class" city - a status, with some privileges, that is conferred by the state when a burg balloons to 100,000 people.

Although the U.S. Census Bureau - the ultimate numbers authority - pegs West Jordan's latest population at 94,309, the city isn't letting that dampen its festivities.

City officials insist the suburb hit 100,000 last year and now has topped 101,000. They plan to file a census challenge this month to prove it.

Regardless of how you parse the numbers, West Jordan has grown up, providing a home to vast numbers of people with diverse experiences - from a young family striking out in the city's sprawling west-side suburbs to an 89-year-old community activist, and from pioneer descendants fighting to hold onto their 100-year-old farm to a Mexican immigrant who, after years of poverty, has found success in West Jordan.

Beyond the hedge

Five-year-old Caitlee Corpuz leads a busy life in The Oaks subdivision near 6400 West and 8200 South.

Clad in a Minnie Mouse T-shirt and Spider-Man slippers, she rattles off her favorite pastimes: playing with friends, jumping on the trampoline and skidding across the lawn on a slicked-up Slip 'n Slide.

"Welcome to suburbia," proclaims her 9-year-old brother, Gavin.

Granted, he is quoting one of his favorite movies, "Over the Hedge" - a cartoon about quirky forest animals invading the burbs as new homes obliterate theirs - but he delivers the line with impeccable timing.

Gavin and Caitlee live with their sisters, Soraya, 7, and Ella, 2, and their parents, Jared and Hillary Corpuz, in one of the most rapidly developing parts of the Salt Lake Valley.

The area represents nearly a third of West Jordan's landmass and by 2040, when it is built out, the city is projected to top 165,000 people.

For now, though, it's a patchwork of golden fields, new houses and freshly turned dirt. A block east of the Corpuz home, backhoes and dump trucks stand ready to erect a new 80-lot subdivision named Three Forks.

Jared and Hillary grew up in Sandy and Holladay, respectively, but moved their family to Mesa, Ariz., and St. George, following Jared's job opportunities, before landing in West Jordan a year ago.

"Everyone [we know on the east bench] thinks we live so far away, which is funny, because we lived in St. George before," Hillary says.

They came here for the same reasons as many other families: big, new homes at affordable prices and neighborhoods chock-full of couples and children of ages similar to their own.

"It's just overwhelming how many kids there are out here, [but] it's really nice for these guys," Hillary says, referring to her children.

But it does pose a problem: The schools are bursting. Last year, Oakcrest Elementary had 12 kindergarten classes, Hillary says. And the sixth-graders have to attend classrooms in the nearby junior high.

"It's frustrating because you don't feel like you can do anything," she says. "Something needs to be done in the Jordan [School] District."

City leaders are exploring breaking away from Jordan and creating their own district in hopes of corralling class sizes.

Farm holdouts

Betty Naylor probably could relate to the cartoon critters in "Over the Hedge." She, too, feels under siege by the suburban surge.

Her 30-acre farm near the Jordan River is surrounded by stucco homes in various shades of beige and a smattering of crisp, white vinyl fences.

"They love your open space. They love your farm - until you start burning ditch [weeds] at one in the morning," Naylor, 61, says, surveying her neighbors.

This month, the Gardner Heritage Farm - named for Naylor's grandfather, William Gardner, a grandson of early West Jordan settler Archibald Gardner - turns 100 years old.

Naylor promised her father, Ralph Gardner, before he died in 1998, that she would make sure the property earned state recognition as a Century Farm, one held by the same family for 100 years.

She made it this far, but she knows she cannot hold on forever.

Despite buyout offers as high as $200,000 per acre, Naylor vows to keep the farm as long as her three sons - Kenneth, Bradlee and David - will work it for her. It's doubtful the farm ever will pass into fifth-generation hands, those of her one grandchild, 7-year-old Sydney.

Already, Betty Naylor and her sons work full-time jobs outside the farm, which is more a hobby than a livelihood. They raise 50 head of beef cattle - Sydney's task is to name all the calves -and grow alfalfa, grains and apples.

This year, to celebrate the farm's century status, the family used a 1916 grain binder and a 1920 Fordson tractor to harvest wheat.

"It's my heritage. It's our way of life," Naylor says. "Once you sell the field, you can't recapture that."

American dreams

Maurilio Izarraraz was 15 when he left Mexico and slipped across the border into the United States. The eldest of seven children, he hoped to work, send money home to his family and make a better life for them.

Twenty-six years later, Izarraraz is a U.S. citizen, a father of three and still sending money home to his parents in Mexico each month. He and his wife, Debbie, have bought his parents' first windows, doors and refrigerator for their dirt home.

In West Jordan, he has realized a long-held dream of his own: He opened his own restaurant in July.

After decades of busing tables and cooking in fine restaurants, Izarraraz, 40, unveiled Maurilio's Italian Restaurant, near the corner of 9200 South and Redwood Road.

"It means a lot to me," says Izarraraz, who has 17 years of experience cooking Italian cuisine.

It was important to him and his wife to open the restaurant in West Jordan, where they have lived for five years since moving from West Valley City.

"We wanted to do it in West Jordan for the simple fact that . . . we don't have a lot of places out here for good dining," Debbie says, noting that west-siders often have to travel longer distances to eat out. "We want to keep the revenue and the money here."

The couple married as teens and spent most of their early years living in a one-bedroom apartment with their three young children.

Their 22-year-old daughter, Vanessa Muñoz, remembers watching her dad leave for one of his two jobs in the snow on a bicycle before he could afford a car.

"Because of where he came from . . . it always made him try harder to make something better of ourselves," says Muñoz, general manager of the family restaurant. "He always tried to teach us to work hard for anything you need in life."

Reluctant resident

Faye Eldredge was none too pleased when her husband sold their hilltop house in Sandy in 1970 and moved the couple across the valley into a mobile home in West Jordan.

"We had a special love, but sometimes I could have clocked him in the head," exclaims Eldredge, whose husband, Andrew, died two years ago.

Now 89, she still lives in the white, single-wide - which has had some additions through the years - on the parcel they bought in a mobile-home subdivision near 8500 South and 4000 West.

Instead of pining for Sandy, Eldredge set about making the city - and her neighborhood - a better place.

She demanded the City Council provide West Jordan's first senior center - and she got it. She served as president for five years.

"I went before the City Council and stood up and said, 'I'm ashamed that I live in West Jordan. Yes, I am,' " Eldredge recalls of her crusade. "I said, 'Every little town around us has a senior center, but West Jordan doesn't.' "

That changed. So has Eldredge's neighborhood, where she watched the once-tidy-and-new community fall into disrepair and become a haven for drugs and crime. She made sure police increased patrols and, today, the problems are largely gone.

Nearing her 90th birthday, Eldredge doesn't have much time anymore for the senior center, which now has a spacious, new building next to Veterans Memorial Park. She spends her time tending her roses and making quilts for her 40 great-great grandchildren.

"I wasn't too happy . . . when I first moved out here," Eldredge says. "I've learned to love West Jordan because I've become involved here."

rwinters@sltrib.com

West Jordan's 100K celebration

* Wednesday: The first baby born to West Jordan parents after 12:01 a.m. at Jordan Valley Medical Center will be named the symbolic 100,000th resident.

* Friday: The party kicks off at 5 p.m. at Veterans Memorial Park, 1985 W. 7800 South, with games, food, a movie at 8:30 p.m. and fireworks at 10:30 p.m. Free.

* Saturday: More festivities at the park with a 5K run at 8 a.m., a softball tournament, games and entertainment. Free, but fees charged for 5K and tournament.

* Aug. 24: Country band Diamond Rio will perform the first concert ever in the city's rodeo arena, 8125 S. 2200 West, at 6 p.m. Tickets are $18.West Jordan by the numbers

* Census' population estimate for July 2006: 94,309

* City's estimate for July 2006: 100,490.

* City's estimate for July 2007: 101,671.

* New single-family homes in 2006: 777

* Average family size: 3.9

* Median age: 25

* Percentage of the population under 5 years old: 11.3

* Percentage of the population who are white: 88.8

* Percentage of the population who are Latino: 10.1

* Median household income: $57,818

* Average commute to work in minutes: 24.6

Source: U.S. Census Bureau and West Jordan City