Dixie Downs Neighborhood

Named for a racetrack

Dixie Downs is the northwest St. George district strung along Dixie Downs Road, and unusually for a neighborhood name, it commemorates something specific: a horse-racing track.

The track was built by St. George contractor Jay Ence in the late 1960s, and from 1968 it ran a five-day futurity meet every April. Through the 1970s and 1980s it was genuinely well known across the region — its reputation rested on a good sandy track and an unpretentious, congenial atmosphere that drew owners and quarter-horse crowds from several states. At its peak in 1983 and 1984 the meet drew around 250 horses.

The decline was steep. The Lions Club took over running the operation in 1980 and kept it going on volunteer labor, but by the end only about 25 horses were entered. The last race ran on April 29, 1995, and the state of Utah bought the property.

That is the whole reason the name exists, and it is why longtime residents use it with more attachment than a road name would normally earn.

What it's like now

Dixie Downs today is a practical, working part of St. George rather than a scenic one. The area mixes established housing with the commercial development along Sunset Boulevard and Dixie Downs Road, and it is one of the more affordable parts of the city.

That affordability is the main draw. Buyers priced out of the master-planned communities on the south and east sides frequently end up looking here, and renters do too. Housing skews older and more modest, with a mix of single-family homes, manufactured housing and multi-family — a broader range than most St. George districts offer.

The position is convenient in an everyday sense: quick access to Sunset Boulevard, to Snow Canyon Parkway, and westward toward Santa Clara and Ivins. Snow Canyon State Park is closer from here than from most of the city.

What to check before buying

Two things are worth specific attention in this part of town.

The first is that the housing stock varies enormously block to block — more so than in a planned community, where everything went up at once to one standard. Two streets a few hundred yards apart can differ substantially in age, condition and construction type. Comparable sales need to be genuinely comparable.

The second is land. Northwest St. George sits against protected desert on its outer edge, and the boundary of the Red Cliffs Desert Reserve shapes what can and cannot be built in this direction. If a parcel's future depends on what might be developed next door, that is a question to ask before committing rather than after.