Where to Stay in Orem, Utah

What is Orem known for?

Provo shares a boundary with it, Lindon and Vineyard the others, and the four run together closely enough that a visitor crossing from one to the next may not notice the change. The city keeps a long list of named houses, fourteen of them on the landmark register, most carrying the families who built them. UCCU Ballpark handles the other kind of afternoon.

What are the main landmarks in Orem?

Fourteen houses carry the landmark list here. The Carter-Terry-Call House, the Knight-Finch House, the Cordner-Calder House, and the Lars and Christina Olsen House are typical of it, each hyphenating or listing the families that held the property. Two other entries break the pattern.

UCCU Ballpark stands for the modern city, and the Provo Canyon Scenic Byway is not a building at all but a road that leaves Orem for the mountains.

What is the history of Orem?

The city's record opens in 1877. What the following century produced is legible in the house register rather than in any monument, because fourteen family houses survive on it and not one civic building does. The names repeat.

Cordner appears twice, in the Cordner-Calder House and the William James and Edna Cordner House, which is what happens when a family stays put for generations in one part of Utah County. The Lars and Christina Olsen House and the David and Drusilla Baxter House keep two more of those family names, spelled out in full rather than hyphenated. The Stephen and Mary Bunnell House and the Joseph and Margaret Wilkinson House sit on the same list.

Growth arrived from the outside. Provo pressed against one boundary, Lindon and Vineyard against the others, and the open ground between them filled until the four cities met without a gap. Salt Lake City lies up the valley, near enough to pull commuters and far enough that Orem kept its own name and its own council. UCCU Ballpark and the Provo Canyon Scenic Byway belong to this later city rather than the first one.

The houses stayed where they were.

Where is Orem?

Orem lies on flat ground under the Wasatch Range, inside Utah County. Provo, Lindon, and Vineyard press against its other sides, so the city's limits are mostly other cities rather than open country, and the range is the boundary that actually looks like one. One road climbs out.

The Provo Canyon Scenic Byway leaves the valley floor for the mountains, while Salt Lake City sits further along the same corridor.

What is the climate of Orem?

Orem's year splits cleanly into four seasons. Winter puts snow on the Wasatch Range above Orem and rather less on the valley floor, which is why the canyon road matters more in January than the city streets do. Summer runs hot and long.

The two shoulder seasons are brief, and the mountain front shows them first, taking snow early in autumn and holding it late into spring.

How do you get to Orem?

Orem is reached by car, like the rest of Utah County. The valley corridor runs past all four adjacent cities, so a drive down from Salt Lake City crosses the same continuous built-up strip before the Orem exits appear. Mountains offer the alternative.

The Provo Canyon Scenic Byway comes in over higher ground, a longer route that most people take for the drive itself rather than to get anywhere.