Scheels opened its West Jordan location on a Saturday in October, and by noon the parking lot looked like a Costco on the day before Thanksgiving. That was years ago. The novelty has settled, but the store hasn’t gotten any less strange — in the best possible sense — for a retailer selling fishing lures and basketball shoes under the same roof as a functioning Ferris wheel.
Yes, a Ferris wheel. It’s indoors, it’s free to ride, and it seats four. This is apparently a Scheels thing across the chain, not some local flourish someone dreamed up for West Jordan. If you’ve never watched a twelve-year-old try to explain to his dad that the sporting goods store has an amusement ride, it’s worth the trip on its own. The wheel turns slowly above the main floor, past mounted taxidermy and a wall of hunting rifles, which is a combination of stimuli you don’t encounter often in everyday life.
The store sits on Jordan Landing Boulevard, which is the stretch of commercial development that West Jordan built in the early 2000s and has been filling in ever since. Scheels is one of the larger anchors — something like 220,000 square feet, though it feels bigger because the layout folds into itself. You can walk in for a pair of trail runners and find yourself, twenty minutes later, examining fly-fishing reels in a section you didn’t know existed.
That’s either a feature or a bug depending on your personality type. If you go in with a list, budget some extra time. If you go in without one, you’ll leave with things you didn’t know you needed: a thermal base layer, a foam roller, maybe a candy bar from the old-fashioned candy counter near the entrance, which is staffed by actual humans and sells things by the pound like it’s 1987.
The fishing and hunting sections are legitimate, not performative. Staff in those areas tend to know what they’re talking about — ask a specific question and you usually get a specific answer, not a redirect to the packaging. The outdoor and camping section carries a solid range of tent brands and sleeping bag ratings without inflating into REI territory on price, though it’s not dramatically cheaper either. For footwear, the selection is wide enough that you can comparison-shop trail versus road running shoes in the same aisle, which saves a separate trip somewhere else.
Go on a weekday if you can. Saturday afternoons at Scheels in West Jordan are a lot — loud, crowded, carts everywhere. A Tuesday morning in January, though, and the place is almost peaceful. The Ferris wheel turns with nobody on it. A salesperson restocks a shelf. Someone’s dad browses fishing line in complete silence. It’s weirdly pleasant.
There’s a small restaurant inside — Scheels Grill — that serves burgers and fries. It’s nothing that will change your life, but it’s convenient if you’ve been there long enough to get hungry, which happens more than you’d expect. Kids will want to do the shooting simulators near the hunting section; expect to spend a few dollars and several minutes.
Scheels isn’t trying to be a local institution. It’s a big-box chain with a corporate playbook. But West Jordan’s version has settled into the neighborhood in a way that feels earned. It’s where people actually go when they need gear, not just where they go when they’re browsing online and want to touch something first.
