Is this pond of water along the sandbar to Fremont Island actually a pool of "quicksand" in the Great Salt Lake? Perhaps, as most of the rest of the sandbar has been dry in late summers recently.
IT has
always seemed like quicksand in the Great Salt Lake was nothing more than a fanciful
myth. However, according to the Ogden Standard-Examiner of May 28, 1939, two
horses actually died in such “non-existent” quicksand.
“Horses die
in quicksand of Great Salt Lake after driver missed stakes marking route.
Ogdenite is haunted by experience as steeds drown” was the newspaper headline.
Mike Boam of Ogden was driving a light rig, powered by horses, to travel to
Fremont Island over an underwater sandbar. This route was often used in the
1930s to travel to the 2,943-acre Fremont.
In 1944, two horses pulled a wagon over the sandbar to Fremont Island.
These men rode horses across the sandbar to Fremont Island in the 1940s.
Boam said
that without warning his two horses “stepped into a patch of quicksand” and
“several hours of labor failed to extricate the animals.” He had to wade about
five miles through knee-deep brine along the “salty highway” to reach the
mainland.
Taylor Arave pauses at a pond of water along the sandbar to Fremont Island.
When he
reached his home in Ogden he was exhausted, but could not sleep. “The look in
the eyes of those horses when I left them wouldn’t let me rest,” he told the
Standard-Examiner.
By the
following day, both horses were dead, “victims of their own exertions and the
brine they had drunk to quench their thirsts.”
Quicksand is
simply sand inundated with water and where the liquid can’t escape, so while
the animals didn’t sink out of sight, they were trapped in a sticky mess.
(I’ve walked
that same sandbar to Fremont Island twice, when it was above water and mostly
dry. Still, it wasn’t a straight path and at least once I had to curve around a
pond of standing water.)
Also, in 2020, the
Diesel Brothers, who used to own Fremont Island (before they sold the isle to a
non-profit group) reported in a YouTube video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORFbOW027iM&t=167s&ab_channel=HeavyDSparks
that some of their tractors and
equipment had become stuck in “quicksand” along the Fremont Island sandbar.
They were finally able to remove them, with great difficulty. "Peanut butter mud" was one of their descriptions of the briny, wet sand.
Sadly, there are other
horror story for horses involving Fremont Island. When I first
visited Fremont Island in June of 1982 by canoe, it was hard not to notice a
large herd of ponies that were frightened by my presence and they galloped to
the far west end of the Isle.
Looking across the south end of the sandbar to Fremont Island.
I had always
assumed during later visits to the Island that the missing ponies must have
been rounded up and removed. (There were a few other horses living on Fremont
in 2006, when I was visited there, though.)
However, now
I realize that while many of the ponies were removed, 40 of them were shot and
killed on the Island.
Several horses were grazing on Fremont Island in 2008.
An
Associated Press story from March 22, 1988 states that the Idaho rancher who
was leasing the Island at the time shot them, because the cost of removing all
of them was prohibitive and they were over-grazing the Isle and he was going to
put sheep there. He was able to capture and remove about 100 of the ponies by
barge, but the remaining 40 were too hard to catch.
A private
pilot flying over the Island had spotted the carcasses. The “welsh” ponies were
placed on Fremont Island in the late 1950s, as part of a failed plan to make a
recreational development on the Island. So, the animals soon became wild.
(The A.P.
story can be found at: https://www.apnews.com/587130ee35e5a7bc42a1707ee80d605e)
-Horses and
sheep weren’t the only animals to inhabit Fremont Island. For more than two
weeks in the mid-1940s, a “Phantom” coyote escaped extinction from hunters.
The coyote,
who was believed to have hitchhiked to the Isle on a rare chunk of iceberg in
the Great Salt Lake, had killed some 15 of the 800 sheep grazing there.
An army of
dogs and 20 armed men failed to kill the coyote during multiple attempts.
“Phantom of
Isle still eludes dogs” and “Phantom Coyote has hunters marooned in Lake” were
two headlines in the Standard-Examiner, from March 26 and March 29 of 1944,
respectively.
High winds
not only caused dogs to lose scent of the coyote, but they prevented the
hunters from leaving Fremont.
“Hunters again foiled in Phantom Coyote chase; New expedition scheduled” was a March 31, 1944 Standard-Examiner headline. Hunters joked about needing to use a silver bullet to stop the animal, as numerous regular bullets had proven ineffective.
Finally, on
the 15th day of the hunt, “Island Coyote killed in lake waters” was
the headline on April 4 in the Salt Lake Tribune. A bullet had finally wounded
the coyote and so it jumped in the lake and tried to swim away. A speedboat
caught up to him and he was hauled aboard and killed.
Four other
coyotes had been speedily killed on Fremont Island in 1942 after they had
killed numerous sheep, but none were as elusive as the phantom.
-The most
famous part of Fremont Island is the historic cross that Kit Carson carved on
the north end on Sept. 9, 1943.
Only about
six inches long, this Christian relic was left during the first government survey
of the Great Salt Lake and Island. Writings of the exploration prove Carson
made the cross, though uncertainty about its origin swirled into the early
1940s.
“New
speculation arises about Island cross” was a Nov. 2, 1943 headline in the
Standard-Examiner. This story questioned the cross’s origin and speculated that
a bored sheepherder in the 1850s had created it.
However,
soon after it was universally accepted that Carson was indeed the sure author
of the cross.
Note: Fremont Island is now owned by the State of Utah, after more than 150 years of various private owners.
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