The claim

It will be the largest data center in the country

“It's going to be the largest data center in the country, maybe the world.”

Seen: A city Facebook group, August 2026, in a thread about the new site.

Our finding Not accurate

The record contradicts it.

No. A single project already approved in Box Elder County covers 40,000 acres: more ground than the whole of Eagle Mountain, which is 32,256 acres of land. Whatever gets built here, the largest in the country is not going in this city.

The numbers

Stratos project areaBox Elder County, approved April–May 202640,000 acres

All of Eagle Mountain50.4 sq mi of land, US Census32,256 acres

Size stated locallyno acreage or footprint in any Eagle Mountain motionNone

What’s true

The premise underneath it is sound. Eagle Mountain has three data center campuses, it keeps approving work on them, and QTS has bought more ground west of the Pony Express area that has not been through the council yet. Somebody hearing that a company is buying more land here is hearing something true, and the state as a whole is getting enormous ones.

Where it goes wrong

It is the superlative that fails, and it fails on a comparison anyone can make. The Stratos project area in western Box Elder County, a data and energy campus approved by the MIDA board on April 24 and agreed to by the Box Elder County Commission on May 4, covers 40,000 acres. Eagle Mountain City is 50.4 square miles of land, which is 32,256 acres. The project area 200 miles north is about a quarter larger than this entire city, and it is the one Utah newsrooms have been calling the largest in the country.

More detail

Two honest qualifications, neither of which rescues the claim. The 40,000 acres is the project area rather than the buildings: the state's own FAQ says most of it will stay undeveloped and the data center footprint will be “a fraction” of it. And those April and May votes created the project area, not the project: the state says plainly that they did not approve the full development, which still needs air, water and wildlife review.

The other half of the problem is local, and it is the more useful half. Nothing Eagle Mountain has voted on states a size for anything. The QTS-SCL 2 rezone does not give the acreage or the zoning it granted; the Meta development agreement does not list its terms. So there is no figure in the city's record that a claim about size could be measured against, which is exactly why a superlative can circulate here for weeks without meeting a number.

Where this comes from

Every finding here is drawn from an open-meeting recording or a published document. Check it yourself.

“While the entire project area encompasses 40,000 acres, most of the acres will remain undeveloped… The actual data center footprint will be a fraction of the size of the MIDA project area.”

Utah Governor's Office, on the Stratos Project Area, May 4, 2026Frequently Asked Questions — Stratos Project Area (PDF)

What was actually approved, per the same FAQ, April 24, 2026The MIDA Board created the Stratos Project Area on April 24 and the Box Elder County Commission agreed to it on May 4. Asked whether those votes approved the full project, the state answers: “No. This is just the beginning of a multi-step process.”

Eagle Mountain city land area50.4 square miles of land (32,256 acres), against the 40,000 of the Stratos project area.US Census Bureau profile, Eagle Mountain city, Utah

Rezone the land known as QTS-SCL 2The most recent data center land vote here, and it states neither acreage nor zoning, which is why nothing local answers a question about size.The vote, March 3, 2026

More checks on data centers

See all 21 fact checks →

Checked August 19, 2026. Nothing goes on the fact-check list unless an open-meeting recording or a published document can settle it: the rules. Spot a mistake? civicrollcall@gmail.com