![]() The Utah Legislature’s appointment of Reed Smoot, then an LDS apostle, to the U.S. “The church had acquired lots of debt, investing in many different industries during the settlement years of Utah, and it continued to operate these industries after settling, but many of them weren’t making a profit,” Christensen said in an email interview. The church gave up ownership of Saltair Resort in 1906, according to Ian Christensen, who is writing a book about Saltair. The comparison was an overstatement, McCormick said, because church leaders found that being a new Coney Island and being a wholesome recreation spot for Latter-day Saints were incompatible goals. Around the Great Salt Lake, several water-based resorts cropped up in the second half of the 19th century, including the Lake Point Resort, Black Resort and Garfield Resort.īy the 1920s, Saltair Resort was pitched as the “Coney Island of the West,” a reference to the famous amusement area in Brooklyn, New York. In the 1800s, there was a national interest in hot springs, mineral baths and salt baths, all for healing purposes. We’re not subversive, we’re loyal, law-abiding citizens.’ The basic message was that Utah was and will remain a place where families and democratic institutions, business interests and investments are safe.” ![]() With the resort, McCormick said, church leaders “were trying to convey the message that ‘We’re not dangerous. The first Saltair was opened in 1893 - only three years after church leaders formally abandoned the practice of polygamy. “The larger context” for Saltair’s creation, according to John McCormick, went back to the founding of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints - years before the Mormon settlers arrived in Utah in 1847.Īs the church grew, “membership was met with a lot of opposition from the larger society because the church was at odds with them in a fundamental way,” said McCormick, a retired professor at Salt Lake Community College, and co-author of the 1985 book “Saltair Resort.” With the Great Salt Lake in crisis - with water levels hitting record lows, and environmental catastrophe looming - it’s important, Merritt said, to understand “why we stopped caring for the lake.” But, also how our relationship with the lake has changed since the 1920s and ‘30s as tourists, as a population.” With the tours, Merritt said, he aims to “emphasize more of the impact of the lake levels to that recreation that led Saltair to be so popular. ![]() (The tours are free, but capacity is limited go to, and scroll down to “events,” for tickets and information.) to noon, as part of the Great Salt Lake Collaborative. Merritt, an archaeologist and Utah’s state historic preservation officer, will be leading walking tours of the remains of the Saltair resort on Friday, Sept. The location is an archeologist’s gold mine, to which Chris Merritt will attest. When people walk around the old Saltair, they are 12 feet below where the deck and the main pavilion used to be, where salty water lapped against the wooden deck posts. A rare breeze might flutter by, carrying the smell from the nearby terminal Great Salt Lake, whose waters once extended out to the resort’s buildings. Occasionally, a bird will fly overhead - the only real sign of life, aside from the distant sound of freeway traffic. ![]() Today, the land is barren and dry, home to scraggly bushes.
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