Is the Great Salt Lake Really Drying Up? The last 125 years of History Echo "No!"

                         The Great Salt Lake as viewed from Buffalo Point on Antelope Island.

HERE are 6 newspaper headlines:

-“Great Salt Lake Doomed: Big Body of Briny Water Slowly Drying Up.”

-“America’s famous ‘Dead Sea’ soon to be dry land.”

-“Great Salt Lake will dry up in next 300 years.”

-“Great Salt Lake is not rising as reported: Lowest level in history.”

-“Great Salt Lake hits lowest level.”

-“Great Salt Lake continues decline.”

While these headlines may sound like they are very, very recent, they are not. Some are almost 125 years old! And, here is that headline list again, with their sources included this time around:

-“Great Salt Lake Doomed: Big Body of Briny Water Slowly Drying Up.” (From Salt Lake Telegram, August 21, 1902.)

-“America’s famous ‘Dead Sea’ soon to be dry land.” (Ogden Standard-Examiner, February 3, 1924.)

-“Great Salt Lake will dry up in next 300 years.” (Sugar House Bulletin, July 5, 1947.)

-“Great Salt Lake is not rising as reported: Lowest level in history.” (Salt Lake Telegram, January 6, 1903.)

 -“Great Salt Lake hits lowest level.” (Manti Messenger, January 17, 1936.)

-“Great Salt Lake continues decline.” (Davis County Clipper, September 10, 1987.)

   “Within a century the Great Salt Lake, in Utah, will have dried up,” a February 3, 1924, headline in the Ogden Standard-Examiner 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.

   “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.

  We are now more than 102 years since that dire, but inaccurate prediction that the GSL would be gone completely by 2024.

 Surprised?

              Looking east from the northern tip of Antelope Island, across the Causeway.

   I’m no hydrologist or climatologist, but all the gloom and doom are somewhat exaggerated in the media today, regarding the demise of the Great Salt Lake.

  Nature has cycles and man does NOT fully understand nature – and often – man tends to exaggerate his impact on nature.

  Look at the levels of the Great Salt Lake and one will see that its level correlates with the local climate.

  Remember when it was record-breaking moisture in the mid-1980s? What did the Great Salt Lake do then? It rose to record levels too.

          The Author stands atop a washed-out portion of the Causeway to Antelope Island in 1991.

   Now, in the 2020s as the Great Basin is in a record-breaking drought and the winter of 2025-2026 was the lowest snowfall levels ever recorded. How did the GSL respond to such low moisture? Its levels lowered. This is common sense science.

    Environmentalists aren’t seemingly happy unless they have a cause to crusade for and in 2026 that Northern Utah cause is the Great Salt Lake.

  Yes, there are new health concerns about the mineral-laden dust under the Great Salt Lake, that weren’t understood decades ago. Yes, the Wasatch Front has more water users than at any time in history.

  Should we not care about a lowering Great Salt Lake? No, of course not. But, notwithstanding, man does NOT control nature. At best, he can manipulate it a little bit.

  This blog isn’t saying we should do nothing about the receding Great Salt Lake, it is that we should do what we reasonably can – and then realize that nature is ultimately in charge, not mankind.

  Earth science, for all its advancements, still seems pretty lacking. In fact, about 30 years ago, a retired Weber State University Business professor from Kaysville noticed something intriguing about the historical levels of the Great Salt Lake when they were charted on a graph – the looked very similar to a Stock market report.

  So, this professor used stock market principles to predict the near future levels of the GSL and he fared better than most scientists did.

  What can man really do to increase the level of the Great Salt Lake? Reducing water consumption along the Wasatch Front will help slightly, but not that much.

  So, what would really help?

                          A section of the Snake River, near Grand Teton National Park. 

     “Water for the lake. Marcus E. Jones has a plan to present. Would use Snake River …” was a December 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.

   He estimated the cost then for such a canal to be $2 million (that’s more than $50 million in dollar value for 2026, plus lots more with today's increased private land ownership and high values).

                                                       Red Rock Pass sign.

                               Today's area around Red Rock Pass in Southern Idaho.

   His plan was to take the water out of the Snake River at St. Anthony, Idaho, 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. And, no one recently has even mentioned this old, possible plan to add extra water to the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Front.

  There’s no doubt that billions of gallons of water a day dump into the Pacific Ocean from the Columbia River, fed by the Snake River. Water rights are complicated and legal battles persist over them even today. But funneling Snake River water into Utah for three or four months a year (in the late winter or early spring) would not be a disadvantage to Idaho, or the Northwest but if would benefit the GSL and perhaps even the overall Wasatch Front.

         Even in its prime, the Great Salt Lake is a very shallow lake, only 40 feet deep at its deepest.