The Great Salt Lakes

We drove out the he Great Salt Lakes in the morning of the second day. They were a little sad and underwhelming, but we were expecting that.

We listened to a 30 minute video about the history of the Salt Lakes in the information center and it was very interesting. It was quite the tourist attraction at different times in the late 1800s and early 1900s. There was several different tourist spots built at different times. One was like a long bridge extending far out into the lake with restaurants, dance halls, etc. It was quite the thing in its day until the whole thing burned down.

The lake has gone up and down in level over time, so hopefully it is just a down turn right now. There was a lot of snow this year and they say it is already 4 feet hight than last year.

Extracting salt is fairly big business. It isn’t pure enough for human consumption, but they use it for snow melting, animal licking blocks, etc. There is also a very large copper mine (strip mining) near the lake.