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Remarkable, Isolated, and Overlooked
The Great Salt Lake is one of the most remarkable, isolated, and overlooked cruising grounds in the United States. This salty, shallow,
desert sea is the largest inland body of water in the United States after the Great Lakes. Larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware, it is approximately 70 miles long, 30 miles
wide, with a maximum depth of less than fifty feet, and covers over 2,000 square miles.
It comes complete with desert islands, white sandy beaches,
towering cliffs, and secluded coves and inlets to explore. Want to get away from it all? No need to take off for the south seas; you can cruise for days, even weeks on Great Salt Lake
and never see another human being. The occasional distant triangle of sail on the horizon is the only reminder that civilization still exists.
Add to
this the fact that this unusual inland sea never freezes, and you have the ingredients for yeararound sailing opportunities. Here the possibilities for cruising are endless with Great Salt
Lake virtually undiscovered by all but a handful of sailors. . . .
The Great Salt Lake remains virtually unchanged for sailors since the sport became
popular in the 1860s. Sailing the lake today finds the same pristine shores, the same uninhabited islands, the same solitude and majesty, along with the same problems, that the early
navigators and explorers of the lake recorded, a true step back in time for those who want to take it.Marilyn Kraczek
Small Boat Cruising on Great Salt Lake
1995
Moonrise
At twilight a wild and thrilling spectacle. . . . Dim and pale, the moon, the
ghost of a dead world, lifted above the distant Wasatch peaks and stared at the acrid waters of a dead sea.Alfred Lambourne
Our Inland Sea
1887
Night Crossing: Stillness and Solitude Profound Save the dashing of the waves against the shore absolutely nothing is heard. Not the jumping of a fish, the chirp of an insect, nor any of the
least thing betokening life, unless it be that very rarely a solitary gull is disturbed in his midnight rumination and flys screaming away. All is stillness and solitude profound.
Captain Howard Stansbury
The Stansbury Expedition A Bath of Solitude My island is a realization of solitude, ghostly white, wrapped in its shroud of snow, it stands above the blackness of unfreezing waters . .
. . At times I might believe myself standing on the North Cape . . . to mingle with our fellow-men is good. And a bath of solitude is good. Though at times we may desire to wash
ourselves clean of the sins and follies of society, there is no reason why we should live at hatred with the human race itself . . . . The wind roars, but let it roar as it will. The louder
the rumble in the spacious chimney, the brighter burns my driftwood fire. . . . So let the wind roar or whistle as it will. What care I? . . . I turn to my books.Alfred Lambourne
Our Inland Sea
1887
What It Is Unlike most large lakes the Great Salt Lake is named for what it truly is -- it is
great and salty. It is also notable for other reasons. Viewed from space it is an unmistakable landmark in the midst of the Rocky Mountains. To geographers it is America's Dead
Sea. To geologists it is the shrunken remnant of a great Ice Age predecessor. To engineers it is an obstacle to travel and a menace to the works of man. Those who would profit
from it regard it as a rich liquid mineral deposit. To tourists it is a natural wonder like Grand Canyon and Yellowstone Park to be viewed and experienced at least once.William Lee Stokes
The Great Salt Lake
1984 Swimming and Floating in the Great Salt Lake
When the Great Salt Lake is at its normal level of saltiness a person can
float without effort in the briny water. Bathing can be an exhilarating experience if simple precautions are taken. One should not dive into the water from any height. The dense
heavy water gives great resistance and serious neck injuries can result from sudden impact. The proper procedure is to wade into waist-deep water, take a sitting position, keep the face up,
and cautiously extend the legs. The head, arms below the elbows and legs below the knees will now be out of water. Of course, it is impossible to swim in this position.
Never swallow the lake water, it is strong enough to cause severe coughing and choking. It is much more irritating to the eyes than fresh water or sea
water. Water skiing is impossible.
Never swim alone in the Great Salt Lake. Storms arise quickly and can stir surprisingly high waves.
Finally, a bather should take a shower in fresh water to remove the deposit of small salt grains that is left on the skin when the salt water evaporates.
By following these suggestions and using common sense an experience in the Great Salt Lake can be safe and enjoyable.Salt Lake Area Chapter
The American Red Cross Best
That which lies nearest is best.Alfred Lambourne
Our Inland Sea
1887
Amazing Sunsets The waters of the lake change in color from season to season, day to day and, even from hour to hour. Some of these changes arise from within
the water but most of the colorful variations are reflections of sunlight on its surface. Those who observe the lake closely compare its reflected colors to the luster of various
metals. Thus one may see a resemblance to the appearance of burnished brass, gold, silver, copper, chromium, lead, or tin. The best displays, like sunsets and sunrises anywhere, occur
when the sun is near the horizon. Connoiseurs of such things say that a sunset over Great Salt Lake under proper conditions rivals the best on earth. An amazing range of colors is
produced by algae growing in the briny water. These minute quick-growing one-celled plants give colors ranging through shades of red, purple and orange. William Lee Stokes
The Great Salt Lake
1984 Sea Horizons: Strange to Behold To sail around the island is like passing around some grim old Gothic cathedral. There is a favorable breeze, I go aboard my boat,
sail half a mile to the south and then change her course to the west. From the point of divergence the island assumes most symmetrical forms. A wary old pelican rises in air,
describes a wide circle of flight in sentinel duty, and then with loud cries of alarm, drops back behind a low rocky hill. I veer my course again, and soon my boat glides under the northern
cliff. Sea Horizons -- Perhaps the fantastic rocks jutting out from my island may be duplicated on many a seashore. Yet there is mingled with the peculiarities of the scene a weird
sort of witch-like beauty, strange to behold. Not the slightest humidity arises from the briny, only, at times, that wavy heat-haze which makes the distance float in a dreamy mirage.
Alfred Lambourne
Our Inland Sea
1887 Lake of Paradoxes Great Salt Lake is unique among the great American lakes, arresting in its name, yet least known. Its name itself has an aura of the
strange and the mysterious, but it resists those who would know it. Lake of paradoxes, in a country where water is life itself and land has little value without it, Great Salt Lake is an
ironical joke of nature -- water that is itself more desert than a desert.
Moody and withdrawn, the lake unites a haunting loveliness to a raw
desolateness. Not many have achieved a sense of intimacy with it. It is intolerant of men and reluctant in submission to their uses. Defending itself with its own shallows, the
lake is almost impossible of access except at its southeastern shore. Men have attempted to force it into the servitude of navigation; recalcitrantly it has withdrawn from their piers,
leaving them high and dry, or has risen to inundate them entirely. Men have mined its waters of its salts; indifferently the lake has replaced the salts from its affluent waters and has
remained unchanged.
The pervasive mystery clinging to the lake has found expression in a bizarre folklore. Gigantic Indians riding on elephants have
lived upon its islands, and the mysterious white Indians, the Muchies, once dwelt there, too. Maelstroms have ravaged its surface, great vents have opened in its bottom to drain its water
horribly into the bowels of the earth, and of course it was connected to the Pacific Ocean by subterranean passage. Appalling monsters have bellowed in its shallows and made forays upon its
shores. Noxious vapors rising from its surface have brought instant death to birds flying above it, and its corrosive salts have burned the skin from swimmers rash enough to risk themselves
in its waters. . . .
It is regarded as given to irrational moods of violence, its navigation attended by unusual hazards. Its strangling brine is
feared unreasonably, and swimmers are carefully indoctrinated in the technique of caring for themselves should the stinging salt splash into their eyes -- suck a finger clean and wash the eyes
with saliva.
Wholly apart from the foklore, the lake has an obstinate and fascinating identity of its own. It has its own history, a startling
history. But also in three centuries is has been a part of the written history of men. Spaniards and mountain men sought it out; the Mormons fled to it for a promised land. Its
salt waters and the blazing deserts of its making, lying athwart the American westering, forced trails and roads and railroads north and south around it. A barrier sea, fascinating and
strange, implacable and wayward!
Visitors have called its waters bright emerald, grayish green and leaden gray; they have called them sapphire and
turquoise and cobalt -- and they have all been right. Its color varies with the time of day, the state of the weather, the season of the year, the vantage point from which it is seen.
It can lie immobile in its mountain setting like a vast, green, light-filled mirror, or, lashed by a sudden storm, rise wrathful in its bed to assault boats and its shoreline with smashing
four-foot waves. The wind is its only master. The wind drives it contemptuously about from one part to another of its shallow basin, piling up the water here, exposing the naked lake
floor there, as if the basin itself were twisted and tilted under the surging green brine.Dale L. Morgan
The Great Salt Lake
1947 Acknowledging the Masterpiece It was not through our toil or labors that the lake was created. It was not our ideas that sprouted and blossomed.It was not our
hand that placed the brine shrimp and the brine fly so abundantly into and upon the water. Nor gave to each the algae that so richly sustains their life. It was not a song from our lips
that set the seasons, the harmony and rhythms to which the wings of birds give heed. The curves and straight lines that define the island skylines are sculptures by some other, designed. The
waters flow to patterns molded to another's will. Does not whatever or whomever we believe created the lake, deserve our acknowledgement of the masterpiece? Our appreciation of the
magnificent handiwork? Ella Sorensen
Seductive Beauty of Great Salt Lake:
Images of a Lake Unknown
1997 Whale of a Tale
Intelligent newspaper readers have not forgotten the inauguration fifteen
years ago by James Wickham . . . of the whale industry in the Great Salt Lake. As considerable time was required for the development of the experiment the subject has passed out of
the public mind but it has by no means been forgotten by naturalists or capitalists interested in the whale fishery. The whale is the largest and probably the longest lived animal.
They have been known to grow 100 feet in length and live to the age of 400 years. It is a mammal, or, in other words suckles its young. The project of Mr. Wickham was greatly assisted by
this fact, for the difficulty that would attend the obtaining of whale eggs in the deep sea is at once apparent. It was only necessary to obtain a pair of whales in order to begin the
propagation of the animals under domestication. The southern Australian whale was selected as the best suited to the Great Salt Lake. The greater part of two years were occupied off
the coasts of Australia by a vessel sent especially for the purpose in continued efforts to capture the young whales without injury. The feat, however, was at last accomplished, and the
beasts, each about thirty-five feet long were shipped to San Francisco in 1875 in tanks built expressly for them. Fifty tanks of sea water accompanied their overland shipment to insure
plentiful supplies of the natural element.
Mr. Wickham came from London in person to superintend the "planting" of his leviathan pets. He selected a
small bay near the mouth of Bear River connected with the main water by a shallow strait half a mile wide. Across this strait he built a wire fence, and inside the pen so formed he turned
the whales loose. After a few minutes inactivity they disported themselves in a lively manner, spouting water as in mid ocean, but as if taking in by instinct or intention the cramped
character of their new home, they suddenly made a bee line for deep water and shot through the wire fence as if it had been made of threads. In twenty minutes they were out of sight.
. . .
Though the enterprising owner was of course, disappointed and doubtful of the results, he left an agent behind him to look after his floating
property.
Six month later Mr. Wickham's representative came upon the whales fifty miles from the bay where they had broken away, and from that time to the
present they have been observed at intervals, by him and the watermen who ply the lake, spouting and playing.
Within the last few days, however, Mr.
Wickham cabled directions to make careful inspection and report the developments, and the agent followed the whales for five successive days and nights. Discovering that the original pair
are now sixty feet in length, and followed about by a school of several hundred young, varying length from three to fifteen feet. The scheme is a surprising and complete success, and Mr.
Wickham has earned the thanks of mankind.
Catching whales is Great Salt Lake and following that business on the dangerous Greenland coast are two quite
different things. The enormous value of the new industry can be better appreciated by remembering that a single whale produces twenty tons of pure oil.1890 Newspaper Article
Provo, Utah
Reported by David E. Miller in
Great Salt Lake Past and Present
1949
How Like a Dream
There was a sparkler coming down from the north. The day had been calm, but
now the wind tossed up the white-caps in a hurry. I passed by a desert land. With main and foresail set wing and wing, an oar converted into a spinnaker boom, my boat made the length
of Stansbury Island. Massive on the starboard quarter, and sombre hues, the gloomy walls and towers of the island stood up. A boat lay stranded on a pile of rocks. From the big
holes broken into its side, it appeared to have been cast there by some winter storm.
I said there was a sparkler coming down from the north. It was the
beginning of a splendid sail. Held close to the wind now veering round to the west, the boat sped on like an arrow. The water whirled in its wake like a mountain torrent. The
cordage was all astrain. To hold the tiller was like keeping in check an impetuous steed.
Oh, what a night! When can I forget those hours of joyful
life --between the evening and morning twilight? Had that been my only cruise on the Inland Sea, still it would have been worth more than a year of everyday life. How like a dream it
was! How like a dream, to be out on the face of that mysterious sea! How like a dream it was, to be moving in the deep midnight towards the shadow of unknown shores! Every sight
and sound had in it something of wonder or beauty. Blazing like a torch o'er my path, there hung Venus, beneficent star. All of the islands had long disappeared -- been
swallowed up in the darkness. All save one, a small rocky isle, the home of a heron, which was visible for a moment again, as, fiery and big, the moon arose from the waters. A
glorious, never-to-be-forgotten night; all the world and its sordid troubles seemingly as faraway as if I were voyaging to another planet, across the wave of a nebulous sea!Alfred Lambourne
Our Inland Sea
1887
Go To The Lake . . . Go to the lake -- the great teacher -- if one is
willing to open one's eyes beyond the normal bounds of what beauty "should be." It was here first, and it will remain long after we are gone -- constant but ever changing. . . . We know how
much we ourselves have changed because of unwavering determination to remember that the lake is primary, everything else is a distant second. . . . Maybe the lake spirit will one day take hold of
[others] also.John P. George
Seductive Beauty of Great Salt Lake:
Images of a Lake Unknown
1997
Seduction
Having lived quite close to Great Salt Lake (less than five miles as the
gull flies) for thirty-five years, much of that time I have thought of it as an abomination to my conditioning on what a beautiful lake should be. It should have white, sandy beaches, not
mud flats and salt playas. It should have trees and grass, not pickleweed and iodine bush. It should have fresh water, not water so salty that little can live in it. It should
have fish and ducks, not shrimp and plover. It should smell fresh and clean, not putrid and foul.
. . . Walking [one] evening on the mud flats
left in the aftermath of the mid-'80s flooding was when my attitudes first started to change. Something about that evening was special, in spite of the odors. A transformation began
to occur, slowly at first. The seduction had begun. My preconceptions about beauty began to change. After all, this is a desert. My visits to Great Salt Lake . . . began
to increase in frequency.
. . . What a fascinating beauty I began to notice in mud flats, saline flats, pickleweed, shorebirds, brine shrimp, and
enchanting desert islands that dominate the horizon. What a treasure I had in my own backyard! . . . The seductress had won, unquestionably. . . . Its unique beauty is
unsurpassed. The smells are the lake, as are the magnificent sunsets, the salt-tolerant plants, and those birds that make Great Salt Lake their home. Access to many areas of the
lake is difficult but not impossible. Prepare mentally and alow the seductress to take hold.
John P. George
Seductive Beauty of Great Salt Lake:
Images of a Lake Unknown
1997
Heavy Weather and Anxious Faces Soon, however, there was little time for admiring the scene. Winds and waves increased until the latter would have tossed a good-sized
ship. The point we desired to make lay about twenty miles distant, somewhat south of east, so that our course was nearly along a trough of the sea, but in order to quarter the waves, we
directed our course more northerly.
With the waves already so high, and the wind increasing, anxious faces might have been seen upon the yacht. Not but
that we expected to weather it through all right, but when it taxed the strength of two men to manage the tiller of such a tiny craft as ours, then affairs were becoming serious. Perhaps as
a landsman, I over-estimated the danger, but still I believe, even were such the case, that every man on board the boat devoutly wished himself ashore. Not in any craven way. Perish
the thought! Not wishing to have evaded the danger then and there, and thus have missed its lesson, but, rather, that we had fought it successfuly through. All men, save born cowards,
must know of the thrill, the secret sense of exultation, engendered sometimes in the presence of danger. To those who pass their lives in continual security must sometimes come a longing,
the knowledge of a desire not satisfied. In the present case, it might be argued, there was no way of escape; true, but under similar circumstances, no one need expect to make a cruise
across the Inland Sea, without incurring the same amount of risk.
By sunrise, the blow had come to its hardest. The 'white squall' was strong indeed.
The waves had a vicious appearance, the foam torn fiercely from off their crests. We experienced one trying moment as we dropped the reefed mainsail, a huge green wave striking the boat a
terrific blow. For the moment we were surrounded in hissing foam. The next, we were high on a crest, the foresail holding us steadily enough to the wind.
That was the turning point; we began to breathe. The waves grew no higher; soon we fancied they were growing less. What a magnificent sight it was, as
the sun lifting above a low bank of clouds, streamed on the turbulent sea! Struck by the level rays, how old the western mountains appeared; centuries upon centuries of age seemed suddenly
heaped on their heads. Toward the sun how beautiful it was! The high transparent waves pierced through by the light, so that they came forward like craggy walls, emerald below, and
topaz above.Alfred Lambourne
Our Inland Sea
1887 Misconceptions
There are many misconceptions about Great Salt Lake -- words misspoken long ago, then echoed down the canyons of time,
bounced so often from generation to generation that the echoes are now considered truth. Inkweed . . . iodine bush . . . snowy plover . . . American avocet . . . marbled godwit . . . eared
grebe . . . phalarope. Not exactly household words in the valley of Great Salt Lake. It is our loss, for they are important components of a magnificent salt-loving ecosystem we have
scarcely taken time to know.
Sometimes I think of Great Salt Lake as a lake without a face, without an identity. I ponder without resolution:
What has gone wrong? Why has so much that is unique and beautiful about our salt lake become the object of scorn and derision, been ridiculed or stamped out and replaced with some
counterfeit version of what someone thinks the lake should be?
Why do plans for making a freshwater lake proliferate when we have a unique treasure
whose ecology is scarcely understood. Why do we continue to focus on creating only freshwater marshes with bulldozers and steam shovels -- calling it enhancement and mitigation -- and
scrape away and destroy unique saline flats and a salt-loving plant ecosystem and the animals that depend on it? Why do we smugly dump our toxins and wastes into the lake, assuring each
other through words of the harmlessness and shift the burden of our errors onto those who come after us? Why do we continue to build our human institutions closer and closer, strangling the
lake, and then, when the lake rises -- as it surely will again -- we chant: the lake destroys, the lake destroys, the lake destroys. When will we learn that it is not the lake that
destroys, but we who are destroying the lake? The reclaims its own. Too many people have talked about what the lake should be and what the lake should do for us, but so very few have
ever stopped to listen to what the lake is. Those who do almost invariably fall deeply in love with this shallow lake that speaks a special language.
. . . Go to the lake with an open mind. Our greatest teacher will be the lake itself, and much of what it has to teach us has not been, nor ever can be, captured by the written word.
With few people having had access to the lake, and with a value system favoring development, I now watch with abject horror as some of the nicest, well-meaning individuals, agencies, and
organizations plan the future of the lake. As I listen to the language and to the spoken words, I tremble for the lake, for it seems many do not have a clue to the unique natural treasures
Great Salt Lake holds or what their plans will ultimately destroy. It is time to shed our misperceptions and misspoken words, to peek behind the mask we ourselves have painted that obscures
the face of the lake and seek the true identity of Great Salt Lake.Ella Sorenson
Seductive Beauty of Great Salt Lake:
Images of a Lake Unknown
1997 Something Sublime
To travelers so
long shut among the mountain ranges a sudden view over the expanse of silent waters had in it something sublime. Several large islands raised their rocky heads out of the waves. . . . Then,
a storm burst down with sudden fury upon the lake, and entirely hid the islands from our view.
John C. Fremont
Report of the Exploring Expedition
to the Rocky Mountains
1845
Spirit Impressions The clear, sky-blue surface of the lake,
the warm sunny air, the nearby high mountains, with the beautiful country at their foot, through which we on a fine road were passing, made on my spirits an extraordinarily charming impression.
Lienhard (a Swiss immigrant)
1846 A Wilderness Experience
We should bill the lake for what it is -- a place of grandeur and solitude, which nourishes our thoughts and heightens our sensitivity to nature. Seen
in that light, the brine flies become a fascinating curiosity more than an annoyance. The Great Salt Lake offers a wilderness experience, not a beach party, and no amount of promotion and
development will change that. Dean L. May
in Images of The Great Salt Lake
1996 (Centennial)
On Becoming a People of the Lake Consider that we are only the
very latest people to live near the Lake over more than ten millenia, and that most who inhabited these shores during all that time drew material and spiritual nourishment without changing her at
all. That thought ought to humble us. Perhaps we owe something to all those men and women who preceded us in this place. We could gain much by allowing ourselves to become
again, if only in some small degree, a people of the Lake.Dean May
in Images of The Great Salt Lake
1996 (Centennial) Peace
Yet if there be death, also there is life; if there be crime on the earth, above there
is the glorious sky. . . . Down by the shore, the blue waters sparkle. As I look around my island, I might imagine at this hour, that death and crime had never been.Alfred Lambourne
Our Inland Sea
1909
Senses Massage It is a desert of water in a desert of salt and mud and rock, one of the most desolate, and desolately beautiful, of regions. Its sunsets, seen
across water that reflects like polished metal, are incredible. Its colors are of a staring, chemical purity. The senses are rubbed raw by its moonlike horizons, its mirages, its
parching air, its moody and changeful atmosphere.Wallace Stegner
"Dead Heart of the West"
American Places
1981 If No One Else Is Interested Somewhere there should be a
place for artists and tourists -- if no one else is interested -- to watch the gulls wheel into a flaming sunset and to ripple their hands in the smooth brine.George Dibble
"Deserted Site Remains Tourist Artist Mecca"
Salt Lake Tribune
1961 The Empty Mirror
As an image in our field of vision, the Great Salt Lake is most like a mirror. It stretches out flat, paralleling
the horizon, reflecting back the color of the sky. At times and depending on one's vantage point, the Lake's surface echoes a jumbled, gossamer-like pattern of clouds, at others it appears
as a metallic turquoise silver -- a neon line separating earth and sky. And though many of us see the lake every day, we never see it as a complete geographical entity, that is, as a body
of water with a shape and depth and teeming with living creatures. We see only what lies before us, and what we see looking west from the Wasatch Front is a horizontal strip of colored
emptiness. . . . In its vast stretches of quiet, the Lake encourages the spiritual equivalent of the optical illusion it creates: reflection.
For
well over one hundred years, visual artists have turned toward the Great Salt Lake and have found in its silent geography the shapes, colors and compositions that speak of seclusion and
constancy. The message of this art, surveyed in the present exhibition for the first time, is that space in which to reflect, or to simply be, is not a picturesque luxury, but rather a
deeply felt human need.Will South
Images of Great Salt Lake
1996 (Centennial)
Where the Non-Familiar Takes Shape
This is a fragile place, and a place where naked forms themselves give
shape to our own often shapeless spiritual longings. We often wish to experience the non-city and the non-developed, to come close to a place where familiar things are not.
Will South
Images of Great Salt Lake
1996 (Centennial) |
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