Butlerville Days Still Going Strong After 12 Years

Cottonwood Heights, Utah - For the 12th year in a row, Cottonwood Heights celebrated its beginnings with the annual Butlerville Days festival. The two-day event included pickleball tournaments, chalk art competitions, a parade, live music and an all-ages carnival.

 Butlerville Days is named after the Butler family who originally settled the Cottonwood Heights area.

 “As it got more populated, it was still referred to as the Butlerville area. It got even more known as it got more settled. It’s still informally known as Butlerville,” said Jim Monty, chair of the Butlerville Days planning committee “As you drive down Fort Union (Drive) toward the canyon, that hill you get to between 2700 east and 2300 East is Butler Hill.”

The festivities started on Friday, July 22 with the main day on Saturday, July 23. The festival saw many of the same activities and attractions as in years past with a few more additions to the mix, including one of the largest fireworks show in the valley.

 “Last year, we started having a carnival and we carried that on to this year. We have musical acts from noon until 10 p.m. on the main day. We have inflatable and bouncy rides for the kids to enjoy. We have a lot of great food vendors and this year, we added on the eve, which we’ve normally had a movie night for the last couple of years, we had bingo, which was a lot of fun,” Monty said. “We had a chalk art competition. We had some wonderful artists come out and do some amazing chalk art. We’ll carry both of those to next year. We also have a really cool car show that grows year to year.”

 The biggest draw this year, like last year, was the carnival. Monty said it continues to be a big hit, while the parade remains fairly popular. The committee also books musical acts to play throughout the festival.

“We try to rotate our musical acts. This year we have Foreign Figures, who was our opening act last year. A lot of people anticipated that,” Monty said. “Last year, we had Charley Jenkins, who is a great performer and was a big hit last year. We definitely get a big headline act that people are going to like.”

 It took a volunteer force of over 100 people to coordinate the various events over the two-day period.

 “There’s about 25 people on the committee who organize starting late the year before and we really ramp it up in the winter and spring,” Monty said. “We have a number volunteers who help the day of with getting the events done.”

 When it comes to planning next year’s Butlerville Days, the committee receives a lot of feedback from the attendees. Volunteers spend time mingling with people and asking them what they think. The public also calls the city offices to express their opinions on what they liked and what they didn’t like.

“We talk about it a lot as a group and especially to the (city) council. The mayor and the city council give us a lot of feedback,” Monty said. “That’s why we added a lot of the Friday events this year, just to be able to ramp it up and give people more to do through the event.”

Monty and the rest of the Butlerville Days committee expressed appreciation to all the residents for coming out to the festival and especially for providing feedback and their opinions.