Radio reception crackles in and out. Street signs have more arrows to housing developments than neighborhoods - Prestige Homes and Pioneer Builders mingle with "Sundance" and "The Ranches." And City Hall is miles from the nearest gas station.

With a slogan like "Utah's New Frontier," this 11-year-old town of 23,000 still seems just-unwrapped - new homes, new elementary schools, new streetlights. And new politicians.

Youthful inexperience might explain the special brand of loony politics that left the rest of us wondering if there was something in the water.

Eagle Mountain has plowed through nine mayors in its brief history - including one who faked his own kidnapping and another who padded his resume and faces several criminal counts for misusing public funds. A former councilman shot himself while flying over Lehi in a motorized paraglider. A former councilwoman took undisclosed cash from a developer. Then, during the 2007 campaign, a misguided partisan reprised the infamous Carl Snow-Bill Orton ad in an attempt to scuttle then-councilwoman Heather Jackson's bid for mayor. It backfired.

Jackson knows her city's history. And she doesn't want to look back.

"I know where not to go," she says.

Nestled between the Oquirrh and Lake Mountains on the cusp of Tooele County, Eagle Mountain is 10 miles from Saratoga Springs and 20 miles from anywhere else. To live there, you'd have to be a rugged individualist or a young family looking for a brand-new, $200,000 house.

Jackson is somewhere in between. At 36, she's a relative old-timer. She moved to Eagle Mountain more than nine years ago. Raised in Maryland, Jackson came to Utah to attend Brigham Young University. She quit her job as an escrow officer with the birth of her third son three weeks ago.

At her swearing-in ceremony Monday, the new full-time mayor beamed while her supporters took photos and munched on chicken salad sandwiches. Not one for long speeches, she briefly ticked off a to-do list: finding her replacement on the council, finishing city parks and trails, opening City Hall on Fridays and boosting citizen participation. Rehabilitating a city wasn't officially on the list.

It's Jackson's job to be stable, boring even. She knows a big part of her job is restoring her city's reputation.

"There's a lot of repairing that needs to be done," she says. "We have to start rebuilding residents' belief in their government. We have to gain that trust. Then we have to start emphasizing the good things about Eagle Mountain."

Seems residents are ready, eager even, for her to start.

"Eagle Mountain's a good place to live," says outgoing Mayor Don Richardson, almost trying to reassure the crowd. "We'll be opening up a whole new chapter."

This time, new is good.

walsh@sltrib.com