UtahRails.net

UtahRails.net

Saltair Resort

This page was last updated on December 18, 2024.

(Return To Great Salt Lake Resorts Page)

(Return To Utah Railroads Index Page)

(Only selected events are included here, to expand on points made in previous published histories.)

Overview

(Read the Wikipedia article about the Saltair resort)

The following excerpts come from the January 9, 1959 issue of the Salt Lake Tribune, upon the resort and underlying property being gifted to the State of Utah.

Original Saltair

The location known as Saltair was originally the site of the salt plant of the Inland Salt Company. It was the junction of railroad lines that served the salt company's railroad and the Utah & Nevada narrow gauge line as early as August 1888, and was a short distance south of the wye turning tracks of the later Salt Lake Garfield & Western railroad (originally the Saltair Railway). The north leg of this wye track was used by SLG&W trains to take passenger trains directly to the Saltair Beach resort. The south leg of the wye track was used by freight trains to access the Inland Salt company's salt plant.

The Utah & Nevada narrow gauge built a spur from its main line, at a point called Saltberg, northward to the new location of Saltair, the site of Inland Salt company's salt plant. The Utah & Nevada Saltair spur connected the original Inland Salt company's salt plant at Saltair with the railroad's main track at a location called Saltberg, also known as Kesler's Farm, 14 miles west of Salt Lake City. The spur was completed in September 1888.

Saltair Junction (later shortened to Saltair) was originally known as Crystal Junction. It was the point on the SLG&W where Morton built its later salt plant. The station was located at the far northeastern corner of today's Kennecott tailing pond.

The original Saltair spur for the Utah & Nevada was 2-1/2 miles long, and extended north-northeast from a station on the Utah & Nevada known as Saltberg, to the station known as Saltair. The original Saltair lay under the northwestern edge of today's Kennecott's tailings pond.

The original Saltair station was the site of Inland Salt's salt plant. Saltberg on the Utah & Nevadas the site of the spur's connection and a set of wye turning tracks, a short distance north of today's S.R. 201, between the old and new S.R. 202. Traces of the wye track can be seen on modern satellite photos.

(The Inland Salt company's railway was situated within the salt company's salt ponds, and extended between "Saltair" on the Utah & Nevada, and Crystal Junction of the SLG&W. Crystal Junction later became "Saltair Junction" at mile post 9.57, and late became the site of the salt plant of Morton Salt Company.

(View a map of the Inland Railway in 1923, showing the original Saltair Junction)

(View a Google Map of the railroads in the vicinity of Garfield)

Saltair of 1893

(Read the Wikipedia article about the Saltair resort)

(See also: Saltair, by Nancy D. McCormick and John S. McCormick, published in 1985 by University of Utah Press (PDF; 115 pages; 15.5MB)

Timeline

(Only selected events are included here, to expand on points made in previous published histories.)

January 3, 1889
Surveyors were busy in the vicinity of the Saltair salt plant. It was mentioned that the beaches at Saltair were equal to the beaches at Garfield. (Salt Lake Herald, January 3, 1889)

March 6, 1890
Matthew White announced plans for the construction of a hotel 13 miles west of Salt Lake City on the shore of Great Salt Lake, along with a railroad connecting the city with the hotel. Five thousand shade trees were to be planted at the new park. The new manager of the new hotel, Matthew White, had laid a foundation corner stone at the site of the hotel. The project was on hold during June 1890 due to the lack of fresh water, and the difficulty of drilling a well at the site. (Salt Lake Herald, March 6, 1890; Salt Lake Tribune, March 23, 1890; Salt Lake Herald, June 25, 1890)

August 27, 1890
Matthew White showed plans for a half-mile pier at Saltair, along with a hotel and a dancing pavilion measuring 90 feet by 140 feet. (Salt Lake Herald, August 27, 1890)

June 4, 1891
Matthew White was reported as selling his Saltair property, consisting of 2-1/2 miles of shoreline at the lake, for a reported $250,000. (Salt Lake Tribune, June 4, 1891)

June 8, 1891
The Saltair Beach Company was incorporated in Utah on June 8, 1891. The officers and directors were the same as the officers and directors of the later Saltair Railway. (State of Utah corporate records)

September 26, 1891
The Saltair Railway filed its articles of incorporation "yesterday." (Salt Lake Tribune, September 27, 1891)

April 3, 1892
The Saltair Beach company owned 740 acres along 2-1/2 miles of shore lands. (Salt Lake Tribune, April 3, 1892)

April 17, 1892
"Work has begun on the Saltair Railway in earnest, and its is now stated that the road can occupy South temple street without causing the rails of Union Pacific ro be removed." (Salt Lake Tribune, April 17, 1892)

May 17, 1892
"The first spike of the Salt Lake & Los Angeles railroad was driven yesterday." No trumpets, no brass bands, no speeches. Nothing but the blow of the sledge hammer. (Salt Lake Herald, May 18, 1892)

June 22, 1892
"The piles have been driven for the pier, which will be over a half mile long and the lumber for the pavilion, bath house and hotel has been ordered." (Salt Lake Herald, June 22, 1892)

June 8, 1893
The Saltair Beach resort officially opened this date. (Salt Lake Daily Herald, June 8, 1893)

January 30, 1917
News item about the Salt Lake Garfield & Western taking over the Saltair Beach Company for $200,000, to allow for the issuing of $600,000 in railroad bonds. (Salt Lake Mining Review, Volume 18, number 20, January 30, 1917, p.32, "Mine, Mill and General Construction Notes")

July 7, 1934
"In 1896 the world famous Saltair was constructed. Eleven acres of concrete stands on ten thousand pilings. These were buried beneath the water, but during the past three years, the lake has so decreased that the resort is on dry land. There have been two disastrous fires - one in 1925 burned the main pavilion. It was rebuilt in 1926 by Ashby Snow, Willard T. Cannon and David P. Howell as a monument to the first pioneers who conceived the idea of a Saltair resort. During 1930, the giant racer was demolished by fire and was rebuilt the following year. It was designed by Professor Julius Hayes and his assistants of the University of Utah. Although is is one mile and a fourth long and the highest point is above 100 feet, it does not contain one nail. Two carloads of galvanized bolts hold the tewenty-five carloads of first growth firs in place. The racer was constructed at a cost of $75,000." (Deseret News, July 7, 1934)

June 18, 1951
A fire at the Saltair resort in the early morning hours of Monday June 18, 1951 caused $50,000 damage and destroyed two bathhouses,a boiler room, a laundry and hothouses. The biggest loss was reported as the laundry. (Salt Lake Tribune, June 21, 1951)

May 25, 1952
William M. Armstrong died at age 44. He had been manager of both the Saltair resort and the Salt Lake Garfield & Western Railroad since 1936. (Deseret News, May 26, 1952)

August 30, 1957
A wind storm destroyed a large part of the "Giant Racer" roller coaster at Saltair. (Salt Lake Tribune, August 30, 1957)

January 8, 1959
The owners of the Saltair Beach company met with Utah State Park and Recreation Committee, with the company offering the resort to the state. The resort was "gifted" "with no strings attached" to the state by the comapny that owned both the railroad and the resort. The gift included the 28 acres where the resort was located, plus another 350 acres of leased land that included beach property. (Provo Daily Herald, January 8, 1959; Salt Lake Tribune, January 9, 1959)

The following excerpts come from the January 9, 1959 issue of the Salt Lake Tribune.

January 12, 1959
"Since the resort was accepted, Chairman Harold Fabian [of the Utah State Park and Recreation Committee] has said the commission would not operate it, but might rehabilitate it and lease it to a private operator." (Salt Lake Tribune, January 12, 1959)

May 5, 1959
The following comes from the May 5, 1959 issue of the Pocatello Idaho State Journal newspaper.

October 19, 1959
The following excerpts come from the October 19, 1959 issue of the Salt Lake Tribune.

January 30, 1960
The merry-go-rounds and ferris wheels at the "abandoned" Saltair resort were donated by the State Park and Recreation Committee, to the State Training School at American Fork, and were to be installed at the school's Fairyland Park. (Ogden Standard Examiner, January 30, 1960)

March 18, 1960
The following comes from the March 18, 1960 issue of the Deseret News.

August 18, 1960
The U. S. Army Corp of Engineers completed its survey of the Saltair resort and state plans to develop the site as a boat harbor. The survey had cost the state $24,500, and recommended improvements totaling $1.5 million. The project included a Corps of Engineers project to dredge a channel 5,000 feet long, 100 feet wide and 7 feet deep, with a cost of $635,000, of which Utah would pay its share of $290,000. The channel would end in a boat harbor with space for 150 boats, with the state covering the entire cost of $900,000. The biggest concern though, and biggest cost, was the need for fresh water and sewage disposal, which was not considered in the Corps of Engineers plan, and which would be paid for entirely by the state. The remote location of the proposed boat harbor would result in a very high cost to provide such facilities. (Deseret News, August 18, 1960)

January 14, 1961
The Utah State Park and Recreation Committee heard testimony from the Salt Lake County Fire Chief, in which he stated that following an inspection on January 9th, that if the Saltair resort caught fire, he would not be able to save it from complete destruction due to the deteriored condition of the buildings. (Deseret News, January 14, 1961)

April 3, 1961
Vandals broke into the Saltair resort and broke nearly all the windows in most of the buildings, as well as starting a large bonfire in the middle of the large ballroom dance floor. The damage was apparently done in the previous week. (Provo Daily Herald, Monday, April 3, 1961)

April 5, 1961
The Utah State Park and Recreation Committee decided at its reguler meeting on April 4th, to invite bids on April 24th to demolish the large Saltair pavilion and associated out-buildings. (Ogden Standard Examiner, April 5, 1961)

(There were then during the following years, numerous proposals for restoration and reuse of the state-owned property, from a wide variety of groups, none of which came with the funding to actually save the facility. People with all manner of plans on how to spend other people's, especially government money. Vandalism was a continuing problem.)

November 12, 1970
Fire destroyed the Saltair pavilion. The large pavilion had already collapsed by the time fire crews arrived, and the crews spent their efforts on saving the piers and wooden structure on which the pavilion and other buildings were situated. The fire had been discovered at 3:53 a.m. by a Salt Lake County Sheriff's deputy on the morning of the 12th, and fire crews arrived at 4:20 a.m. The cause of the fire was almost assuredly arson, since there was not electrical service, nor any other source for fire to start accidently. (Provo Daily Herald, November 12, 1970)

"Saltair" by the McCormicks

Nancy D. McCormick and John S. McCormick
University of Utah Press, 1985

The coming of the railroads heralded a new era in lakeside recreation. The completion of the transcontinental railroad at Promontory in 1869, the Utah Central Railroad between Ogden and Salt Lake City, which ran close to the eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake, in 1870, and the Utah and Nevada Railway between Salt Lake City and Black Rock in 1875, made the lake much quicker and easier to reach. What was once a four-hour carriage trip from Salt Lake became a journey of less than an hour, and businessmen quickly moved to capitalize on the lake's new accessibility. By the turn of the century eight resorts had been built, four on the southern shore and four on the eastern shore.

The first two opened in 1870, Lake Side on the east and Lake Point on the south. Lake Side was the Great Salt Lake's first resort and, as Dale Morgan noted, for several years "monopolized the resort trade with a succession of Sunday school parties, reunions, ward parties and excursions in general." [Morgan, Great Salt Lake, 354] John W. Young, third son of Brigham Young who had made a lot of money as a subcontractor for the Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads, built it. Although the main attraction was swimming, Lake Side also offered a twenty-five-cent ride around the lake on the City of Corinne, a large, three-decked, stern-wheeling steamboat with eight staterooms, a gents' and ladies' cabin, and a fine dining room. It was inspired by Mississippi River steamboats and built of California redwood. Moonlight excursions on it with dinner and dancing were popular for "portions of Salt Lake City's elite and their ladies" in the mid-1870s, though the Deseret News sounded a cautionary note and chastised parents who "let their daughters go away from home for an entire night to mingle with a mixed company of people." [Morgan, Great Salt Lake, 355]

The City of Corinne took people across the lake to Lake Point, which Dr. Jeter Clinton, "the Genial Doc," as he was often called, built that same year on the southern shore near Black Rock. With the completion of the Utah and Nevada Railroad in 1875 Lake Point's popularity increased, and more and more travelers stopped overnight to enjoy the scenery and a swim. The resort offered white sandy beaches and gracious dining in the three-story, stone Clinton House built in 1874, which had forty rooms and a large dancing hall. In 1875, after President-to-be James A. Garfield cruised the lake on Lake Side's City of Corinne the boat changed its base to Lake Point and its name to the General Garfield and began two-hour, twenty-mile cruises of the lake for a dollar and a half. That same year one hundred new bathhouses and a small pavilion were built, and a buffalo herd, later transferred to Antelope Island, was added "for the interest of East Coast tourists." Special outings, such as the Mormon church's "Old Folks' Day," were frequently held at Lake Point. The Deseret News described it as "a marine pleasure resort" where "sightseeing, mountain views, cool breezes, serene, quiet, restful, healthy, bracing baths" could be enjoyed. [Morgan, Great Salt Lake, 355-356] There was "a general calmness and quietude in this attractive, beautiful place," the paper continued, where people could "while away a few hours, days, or weeks in pursuit of recreative pleasures and renewed health." In the mid-1880s Lake Point advertised itself as "Utah's Great Sanitarium Resort" and invited families to stay at the Clinton House hotel for several weeks at a time.

Lake Point was the first genuinely popular resort on the Great Salt Lake. An estimated 1500 people were there for the Fourth of July 1876, and an 1879 guide book of Salt Lake City attractions explained that "During the hot months cheap trains leave the city for the bathing wharf (Lake Point) daily at the close of business hours, sometimes carrying 500 at a load." [Ovando James Hollister, The Resources and Attractions of the Territory of Utah (Omaha: Omaha Republican Publishing House, 1879), 66]

Lake Point's success encouraged David John Taylor and Alonzo Hyde, son and son-in-law of Mormon President John Taylor, in 1880 to take over a small resort known as Black Rock, which was located a few miles to the east of Lake Point, and try to turn it into "a fashionable bathing resort." H. J. Faust had opened it in 1876, but it apparently never amounted to much, and local newspapers described it as "dilapidated" when Taylor and Hyde bought it. They turned Heber C. Kimball's Rock House into a hotel, built cottages for rent by the season, added bathhouses with showers, boardwalks to the edge of the water, two twenty-one-foot-high swings, a merry-go-round, and a roofed picnic bowery, brought in "City Creek" drinking water, and built a pier and dock for steamboat rides and boat rentals. Still, it remained a relatively small enterprise where swimming was the main attraction even after the Utah and Nevada Railway bought it in 1883." ["Utah Lakes," in Kate B. Carter, comp., Our Pioneer Heritage (Salt Lake City: Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, 1959), 2, 148]

In 1879 a second resort was established on the east side of the lake. Known as Lake Shore, it was a modest enterprise, and only a little is known about it. In 1882 the Salt Lake Tribune reported that "Lake Shore is located fifteen miles north of this city and is reached by the Utah Central Railway, which during the bathing season gives specially low rates for excursion tickets. The grounds have been filled up with dressing rooms and other conveniences, and Lake Shore is rather a pleasant place to visit and enjoy salt bathing." The granddaughter of George O. Chase, one of the owners, recalled that, "Everyone, of course, took his own bathing suit, if he was fortunate enough to have one, but for the most part they were improvised as they were a scarce item at the time."

In 1881 Thomas Douris, captain of the General Garfield, anchored his ship and built a bathing and boating facility just west of Black Rock that became known as Garfield Beach. Six years later the Utah and Nevada Railway bought it and spent $100,000 to build "a new and resplendent" resort, bigger and more elaborate than any previous one on the lake. Its one-story pavilion had three towers and sat on pilings fifteen feet above the water and three hundred feet from shore. A "magnificent view of the most popular portions of the entire resort" could be seen from the center observation tower, and dances and afternoon concerts were held in the pavilion." [Salt Lake Tribune, June 29, 1887]

Among Garfield's attractions were several hundred bathhouses furnished with washstands, showers, and elegant dressing rooms, a restaurant serving "the finest French dinners," a lunch stand and picnic bowery, and a saloon with "the choicest wines, liquors, and cigars." Other amusements included a race track, games, a shooting gallery, bowling alleys, boats for hire, twenty-five cent steamboat rides, and cottages for "rusticating during the heated season."

At the end of the 1887 season over 84,000 people had paid admission to the Garfield and Black Rock resorts. Many of them were tourists. Twenty carloads of New York Veteran Firemen, for example, held their national convention at Garfield. In 1888 the Denver Republican reported that it was considered the eminently "proper thing for persons crossing the continent to stop several days at Garfield Beach, where they may enjoy the novel and pleasing experience of salt surf-bathing in the very heart of what was once called The Great American Desert, and no tourist may properly be said to have seen the sights of this country who has not paid some attention to this marvelous in land sea." [Denver Republican, June 16, 1888]

In 1892 the Union Pacific Railroad bought Garfield and invested $150,000 in it, adding new dressing rooms, more fresh-water wells, a thirty-two-and-a-half horsepower generator ( which provided the first electricity to any of the lake's resorts) , and installing lights in and on top of each bathhouse so that swimming could continue after dark. In 1904 a fire completely destroyed Garfield, including all the buildings and the steamboat. Only the pilings below the water's surface were left. There were several announcements that it would be rebuilt, but it never was, and in 1906 the Western Pacific Railroad ran its new tracks straight through the middle of what had been the lake's most popular and elaborate resort.

A few years after Garfield was established another resort sprang up on the Great Salt Lake's eastern shore. Named Lake Park, the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad built it in 1886 midway between Ogden and Salt Lake and two-and-one-half miles west of Farmington where the tracks of the Utah Central Railroad came closest to the lake. "One of the most attractive watering places in the West," it opened on July 15, 1886, and featured an open-air pavilion with delicately carved lattice work and archways that Richard Kletting, later the architect of Saltair, designed. Summer cottages rented by the week or month, and bathhouses were available for changing. For fifty cents admission people could enjoy swimming, dancing, boating, a merry-go-round, roller skating, target shooting, and bowling alleys. Another fifty cents bought a full-course dinner in the resort's restaurant. The first year Lake Park had fifteen dozen men's grey flannel bathing suits and three dozen women's blue flannel suits available for rent. In an effort to deter "bathing suit thieves, who have already played havoc at other places on the lake," the management stenciled "Lake Park Resort" across the front of the suits and announced that, "The first person caught will be made an example of."

Six trains ran daily from Salt Lake to Lake Park and three from Ogden. The resort was the home of the Salt Lake Racing Club, which held several successful sailing regattas, and a rowing club with fifty members. By the end of the first season 53,347 people had paid admission, and owners reported that "The exceeding liberal patronage bestowed upon the Resort in the unfinished state clearly indicates the popular demand for and appreciation for better accommodations than had ever before been given for Lake Bathing." [Salt Lake Tribune, June 27, 1887]

Lake Park was a vigorous competitor with Garfield until 1893 when the lake began receding, leaving its beaches with "a sticky brand of blue mud" that was miserable for bathers. Though owners thought about building an enclosed swimming area or a walkway over the mud to the water, they finally closed the resort instead. Three years later, in 1896, Simon Bamberger, later Governor of Utah, moved Lake Park's roller skating rink, saloon, pavilion, cafe, and merry-go-round ten miles inland to the outskirts of Farmington and began a new resort he called Lagoon.

The next resort built on the Great Salt Lake was Syracuse. Located near the town of Syracuse, five miles west of what is now Clearfield, it was easily accessible by rail from both Salt Lake City and Ogden, and thirteen trainloads of people came from Ogden alone for its grand opening on July 4, 1887. Syracuse advertised itself as "An Oasis in the Desert" and was the only resort on the Great Salt Lake with shade trees. A grove of round-leaf poplars from Weber Canyon was planted three hundred yards from the water, and willow-covered boweries provided picnic spots under the trees. A railroad car, sometimes powered by a steam engine and sometimes by horses from the Syracuse Horse Railroad Company, left every fifteen minutes from the picnic grove and took passengers to the large pier where they could take excursion boats to nearby islands, dance in the pavilion, or change into swim costumes in one of the seventy-four bathing compartments. Visitors could also watch "high wheel" bicycle races held on a dirt track. The main complaint of patrons during the first season was that "bathers had to pass close to the spectators to get to the water," and for the second season bathhouses were moved so that people could enter the water directly from them. Syracuse was popular for a few years, but it was forced to close after the 1891 season because of a legal dispute over ownership of the land." [Ogden Herald, June 27, 1887, 1; June 30, 1887, 1; July 25, 1887, 1; August 20, 1887, 1; Deseret News, June 8, 1888; and Ogden Standard, July 5, 1888, 1]

By the early 1890s the resort business on the Great Salt Lake was booming, with each new resort larger than the last and each offering more rides and more entertainment. But the last, the most elaborate, the most expensive, and the most popular was yet to come.

On January 14, 1893, the Deseret News announced construction of a new resort on the shores of the Great Salt Lake to be called "Saltair." Though the pleasure of swimming in the Great Salt Lake was "world renown," the paper said, never before had there been a resort as magnificent as Saltair was destined to be, and word of it would spread "wherever newspapers are read or words transmitted by lightning." [Deseret News, Jan. 14, 1893]

The owner of the new resort was the Saltair Beach Company, and its largest stockholder was the Mormon church, which held half of the company's 2500 shares. Mormon church leaders and prominent Mormon businessmen held the other shares and were company officers. George Q. Cannon, first counselor to Mormon president Wilford Woodruff and the most influential Mormon leader from the time of Brigham Young's death in 1877 until his own in 1901, was president. Joseph F. Smith, Woodruff's second counselor, was vice-president, while Isaac A. Clayton was secretary-treasurer, and his brother, Nephi W. Clayton, was general manager. Both Claytons were officers in the Brigham Young Trust Company and were involved with other Mormon businessmen in the Inland Salt Company, which operated on the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake near the new resort. The board of directors consisted of President Woodruff; L. John Nuttall, Woodruff's private secretary; James Jack, church treasurer; and George Henry Snell, who owned the Utah Soap Company and was a founder of the Inland Salt Company.

Mormon church officials organized the Saltair Beach Company in June 1891.

[Work began in January 1893 after architectural plans were approved. These plans were by Richard K. A. Kletting, Utah's most notable architect. The resort was opened to the public on Memorial Day 1893 and was officially dedicated on June 8, 1893.]

 

###