What's Actually New Along Heber Valley's Highway 40 This Summer
August 13, 2026
August 13, 2026
Drive north out of Heber City on Highway 40 this month and you will pass active construction before you reach Deer Valley. That is new. For most of the last decade, everything interesting on that stretch of road happened behind a resort gate, funded by resort money, built on resort land. This summer, for the first time, some of it is happening in the valley itself.
That distinction matters more than it sounds like it should, and it is the thing worth understanding if you spend your Tuesday mornings on that road rather than reading about it from somewhere else.
On April 2, 2026, Wasatch County celebrated the groundbreaking of The Slope, a mixed-use development that Heber Valley's own tourism office describes as designed to complement the growing Deer Valley East Village area to the north. Construction is underway now, with phased openings expected over the next several seasons.
The word "complement" is doing real work in that sentence. Deer Valley East Village, the roughly 1,700-residence, $5 billion alpine village rising on the old Mayflower parcel above the Jordanelle Reservoir, is developed by Extell Development Company in partnership with Reef Capital Partners. The Slope is not part of that. It is a separate project, sited in the valley proper, built by people betting that a resort this size needs a second layer of lodging, dining, and gathering space that sits closer to town than the gondola does.
If you have wondered why the valley suddenly feels like it is catching up to the mountain instead of just watching it, this is why. The investment that used to stop at the resort boundary is now crossing it.
While The Slope is still framing, one piece of resort-adjacent hospitality already landed. Canopy by Hilton opened this July as Utah's first Canopy property, positioned next to the Jordanelle Gondola with four on-site dining concepts and direct access from Highway 40. It joins the Grand Hyatt Deer Valley, which opened in November 2024 with 381 rooms and sold out 55 private residences priced from $2.3 million to $6.9 million, as the second major hotel to open at East Village inside two years.
Neither of those hotels required you to own anything to walk in and eat dinner. That is worth remembering the next time someone tells you the valley's growth is invisible unless you are buying in.
Here is the part that runs against the obvious story. Deer Valley's skiable terrain has more than doubled since December 2024, the resort added seven new lifts and roughly 80 new runs for the 2025-26 season alone, and it now counts 31 chairlifts across 4,300 skiable acres. You would expect the price of a summer pass to climb along with all of that. It did the opposite.
| Summer Pass | 2025 Price | 2026 Price |
|---|---|---|
| Deer Valley Access Pass | $425 | $329 |
| Local / Industry / Military Solitude Summer Pass | $350 | $299 |
| Wasatch Gravity Pass | $450 | $399 |
Deer Valley Resort President and Chief Operating Officer Todd Bennett framed the cut plainly when the passes went on sale in April:
"Following our historic expansion this past winter, we invite locals and visitors to experience more of Deer Valley for less this summer season."
The Wasatch Gravity Pass carries the steepest dollar drop of the three, down $51 from last year. Each pass tier comes with its own mix of dining, retail, and rental perks, so the cheapest sticker price is not automatically the best deal if you are the kind of rider who eats lunch at the mountain every week. Read the eligibility terms before you buy.
The bike terrain itself is now genuinely large. Riders access it through Silver Lake Express at the base and Homestake Express at mid-mountain, on flow trails designed by Gravity Logic, the firm behind some of the better-regarded lift-served bike parks in North America. New this year, anyone entering the bike park needs a Deer Valley Pedal Pass and a signed waiver, a small administrative change that is easy to miss until you show up without one.
None of this replaced what the valley already does every summer on its own terms. Heber City's Main Street Park runs the Thursday Market on Main from June through August, alongside a Saturday Sunset Music Series, a Sunday Soulful Sounds series, and free community yoga on Sunday mornings. Midway keeps its own Saturday Farmers Market running June through October. Kohler Dairy Farm offers daily public tours of a working operation that has nothing to do with any resort calendar. Soldier Hollow hosted its Classic Sheepdog Championship May 22 through 25, a fixture that predates every acre of the East Village expansion.
These events do not compete with what is happening up the highway. They were here first, and they are still the backbone of a Heber Valley summer. What has changed is that a second, resort-funded calendar has grown up alongside them, close enough now that a resident who never buys a lift ticket still drives past its construction, its parking lots, and its new hotel every week.
The resort side of that calendar is worth naming specifically, because it is more accessible than its reputation suggests:
A ten dollar cover charge for a festival built around live-fire demonstrations from renowned chefs is not what most people picture when they think about a ski resort's summer programming. It is also a detail that only shows up if you are actually watching the calendar rather than assuming you already know what it says.
The Slope's phased openings are the thing to track over the next several seasons, not because of what it means for anyone's property value, but because it is the clearest signal yet that the corridor between Heber City and the resort is being built out as connective tissue rather than as two unrelated destinations. Watch for the first phase announcements the same way you would watch for a new stoplight going in. It tells you something about what the road is going to feel like to drive in eighteen months.
The nearer-term marker is September. Between the Fox US Open on the 11th through 13th and the Mountain Beer Festival on the 19th and 20th, that month will be the busiest four-weekend stretch Highway 40 has seen since the East Village base opened. If you have errands that route you past Jordanelle on a Saturday, plan for it.
None of this is a pitch to buy anything. It is a description of a valley that is visibly, specifically different this August than it was two summers ago, and the difference is easier to read once you know where to look: not just up at the gondola, but on the highway construction between here and there.
If you are already living in Wasatch County and want a clear-eyed read on how developments like The Slope or the East Village build-out might eventually touch your own property or plans, Echelon Luxury Homes is a good place to start that conversation. Jenny Mecham lives and works this corridor year-round, and a private consultation costs nothing but your time.
Whether you’re searching for a secluded, Sundance mountain retreat or a custom masterpiece in Wasatch, Salt Lake, or Utah Counties, she offers a concierge-level experience designed to help you find a home that embodies your vision of the extraordinary.