When the Snake River was proposed to be the shrinking Great Salt Lake's lasting salvation

                         A dried up and exposed portion of the Great Salt Lake bed.

THE Great Salt Lake is declining. Between droughts and less river water reaching the lake, its level is nearing a historic low.

Ironically, in the early 20^th Century, this possibility was not only recognized, a solution was offered.

“Water for the lake. Marcus E. Jones has a plan to present. Would use Snake River …” was a Dec. 27, 1903 headline in the Salt Lake Tribune.

Jones, a civil and mining engineer and geologist, proposed creating a canal that would bring the flood waters from the Snake River and its tributaries to the Great Salt Lake and Utah. He said this would restore the GSL to its former normal levels and excess water from the canal could be used in other ways, as needed.

                            The Snake River at Jackson Dam.

He estimated the cost then for such a canal to be $2 million (That more than $50 million in today’s dollar value).

His plan was to take the water out of the Snake River at St. Anthony and take the canal through Red Rock Pass at the north end of the Cache Valley. There the canal could dump into the Bear River, or a canal could shadow the river to the Wasatch Front. He said there is always excess Snake water – especially during the months of April, May and June.

Jones’ vision involved more than just raising the Great Salt Lake level. His own studies concluded that the rainfall in the Salt Lake Valley is greater when the GSL is higher.

Of course, this canal never happened.

                          Mesa Falls, along the Snake River.

Some two decades later, newspaper headlines were prophetic on the lake. “America’s famous ‘Dead Sea’ soon to be dry land.” That was a Feb. 3, 1924 headline in the Ogden Standard-Examiner.

 “Within a century the Great Salt Lake, in Utah, will have dried up,” the story stated. It then likened the GSL’s reduction to that of its predecessor, Lake Bonneville.

The GSL fell 10 feet, from 1900-1915, until some exceptional wet years had recently gained most of that loss back.

    A tumbleweed sits along where once the GSL water was more than a dozen feet deep. 

“Were it to disappear, Salt Lake City would lose its principal attraction,” the story stated.

Left would be an immense sink, a giant salty plain, impossible to use for anything constructive.

 An exposed piece of wood along the sandbar to Fremont Island, before it was removed by 2005.

-During the same time period, Antelope Island was no longer and isle. “To Island by land. Trip can be made practically dry shod. Road of salt and sand,” was a Sept. 24, 1900 headline in the Salt Lake Tribune.

The story continued: “Great Salt Lake has been known as the ‘Dead Sea of America.’ If it is not dead, it certainly gives every evidence of being in the throes of dissolution.

The story stated how there was nothing but four miles of glistening salt between what used to be the eastern shoreline of the lake and Antelope Island. A Tribune representative made the trip to the Island by wagon and horses in 35 minutes, “without urging the horses to any great extent.”

One man told the Tribune that he wagered he could travel by land from the ranch house on the south end of Antelope Island to Saltair, 10 miles away, “with perfect safety.”

Cattle were reported as still doing well on Antelope Island, though not much wheat has been raised there, due to extra dry conditions.

Further north, the water conditions of the Great Salt Lake were reported as more favorable. Still, the hunks of decaying boats and other wreckage along the former lakebed were reported as not being very inviting in appearance.

(-Originally published in the Deseret News on August 13, 2019.)