When Lagoon held a 'Bathing Girls' Revue'; Plus more history

BACK in 1918, Lagoon resort hauled in plenty of white sand to Farmington, to create its own

version of "Walkiki Beach.” To highlight the second year of the sands, it again held a “Beauty Parade.”

The Salt Lake Tribune of July 15, 1919, described it this way, “Walkiki Beach will be the scene of brilliant affair on the occasion of the second annual Bathing Girls’ Revue next Friday. Sixty beautiful maids – forms divine – suits superb – will vie for first honors on the white sand beach, while swimming races, high diving and fancy diving contests will augment the interest of the occasion.”

A few years later, Lagoon even hauled in more white sand to expand its beach, promoting its fresh water setting in favor of Saltair’s briny and muddy beach.

                                Malan's Peak.

MORE HISTORY: Weber State College used to set fire to Malan’s Basin, to create a “Flaming Block W” each fall on the mountainside during its annual hike up the Wasatch Mountains.

“College seeks locations for fires on peak” was a Sept. 5, 1939 headline in the Ogden Standard-Examiner.

“Locations for a huge ‘flaming W’ on Malan’s heights and a campfire program in Malan’s basin for the annual Weber College moonlight hike were being sought today by school and student body officials …” the story stated.

                                                        Malan's Basin today.

The hike that year was planned for Sept. 25, the evening of the opening day of school.

(That same newspaper reported that the very first ever issue of the college’s new newspaper, The Signpost, was due out on Sept. 18.)

Two years prior, the Standard-Examiner of Sept. 15, 1937, reported that “Novel features planned for the hike included lectures on moonlight and snakes by the faculty members and a song and yell fest around a flaming block ‘W’ in Malan’s basin,” that story stated.

The Flaming W hike was discontinued during World War II. It was restarted in 1988 as a much longer annual hike to the highest peak in the area, Mount Ogden, which overlooks Malan’s Basin.

(Because of forest fire danger, no fires were held in the modern event, though in the fall of 1977, having a fire on Malan’s Peak was discussed by college fraternities, but never happened.)

-Bears were commonly killed in the early 20^th Century around Ogden and most of the country. “Five bears killed” was a Nov. 2, 1909 headline in the Ogden Standard. “Bill” Wilson, Jr., one of the managers of the Hermitage in Ogden Canyon, killed four black bears, south of the Shanghai Bridge, a day prior. Richard Wilson of Huntsville also killed a fifth bear in the same area shortly thereafter.

                              A more rustic campfire area in Coldwater Canyon today.

-Coldwater Canyon, a side canyon about a mile up Ogden Canyon, used to contain picnic tables and even “water hydrants,” according to the Standard-Examiner of April 10, 1941. Coldwater was also a prime source of drinking water for Ogden City, prior to Pineview Reservoir.

                                         The western side of Fremont Island.

-“The new look at progressive Weber County” was the title of a full-page advertisement in the Standard-Examiner of March 28, 1965. This ad, by the Weber County Commission, featured a wish list of future plans. Included were the development of Fremont Island and Malan’s Basin, two things which never happened.

-Finally, the Ogden Junction newspaper of June 20, 1874 reported on “That earthquake,” perhaps the first quake in the Ogden area. “We have the testimony of several trustworthy ladies and gentlemen that mother earth did tremble and quake about two minutes past midnight on Wednesday night or Thursday morning, whichever your please,” the story stated.

Great Salt Lake tales of quicksand, unlucky equines and a phantom coyote

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 15^th 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.

Condos and homes on Fremont Island?

                 Fremont Island is not much of an island these days, with a low Great Salt Lake.

ARE condos in the future for Fremont Island in the Great Salt Lake?

They WERE a distinct possibility.

(See 2 updates below ...)

In 2018, "Diesel Brother" Dave Sparks headed a financial group which purchased the Island from the Richards Family of Salt Lake, who had owned Fremont since the 1960s, or earlier.
When the Diesel Brother and group bought the Island, they stated on Facebook:
 "We have big, aggressive plans to open the island up for visitors from all around the world to come experience a piece of the Wild West. I hope that all of you can someday join us for an island adventure including summer concerts, offroad racing, horseback riding, camping, exploring, shooting, etc!"

No mention of condos on the island in that proclamation, but they likely have some specific plans to open up Fremont to limited public usage, or their investment yields nothing.
The Island's owners planned a January 11, 2020 bus trip to the Isle to apparently kickstart their development plans.

                   The start of the sandbar leading to Fremont Island.

If condos, or any housing (like a hotel for visitors) were to be added there, access would be a key dilemma. With a low level of the Great Salt Lake, the Diesel Brother group has a souped up bus, with giant oversized tires, called "The Freedom Bus," which can easily traverse the famous sandbar to Fremont Island, that is found off the causeway to Antelope Island.
Yet, the bus only provides limited access to the Island. And, if another causeway-- like the one leading to Antelope Island -- were built to Fremont, that would likely cost millions of dollars.
Drinking water, sewage and electricity would be other essentials there. 
For Antelope Island, the power lines are buried along the causeway to the Island. Where would Fremont's power lines go?
The shortest access would be from Promontory Point South, across Great Salt Lake water, or from Hooper westward. Taking at least power and water lines to the Isle would again be very expensive projects.
There are some small brackish type of water wells on Fremont, but whether they can produce adequate water is unclear.

             The Kit Carson Cross on the north end of Fremont Island.

Hooper City incorporated Fremont Island into its boundaries when it incorporated in the year 2000. Any developments on the Island would have to be approved by the City.
Fremont is home to the Kit Carson, Cross, likely the oldest Catholic or Christian relic in Utah. It also has some graves and the foundation to an old 19th Century home.
Sheep, cattle and horses have all grazed on Fremont Island over the decades. Wild Shetland ponies also roamed the Island until the 1990s.

                                     The Wenner Family graves on Fremont Island.

When the Richards Family obtained Fremont Island, they had dreams of its becoming the Utah version of Alcatraz Island, a prison.
(That's because a Salt Lake grave robber, Jean Bapiste, was exiled there.)
When a prison seemed unlikely there, the Richards Family hoped Fremont could be a state park, like Antelope Island is. That never happened either.

UPDATE: As of November 2020, a non-profit group, Palladium Foundation of Salt Lake has purchased Fremont Island, with the intent of preserving it as open, undeveloped land. No housing or condos! (However, before the purchase, 10,000 to 12,000 homes were planned for Fremont, though water supply and access were obvious roadblocks for any large scale development.)

ANOTHER UPDATE: As of December 2020, Fremont Island is now owned by the State of Utah, after more than 150 years of various private owners.

--All photographs above by Lynn Arave, who has visited Fremont Island four times, once by canoe, once by boat, and twice on foot.

Back when a human life in Utah was ‘worth’ only $2.66 and when 41 head of cattle drowned in the Great Salt Lake

                                              A modern day traffic accident in Layton City.

 “ONE human life -- $2.66. That is the price placed upon life per individual in Utah by those changed with enforcement of the state’s traffic laws,” the Salt Lake Telegram newspaper of Nov. 19, 1943 reported.

The Telegram’s headline was “Utah’s 84 traffic deaths this year emphasize trivial cost of killing.”

The story continued: “On the basis of 84 persons killed in Utah traffic (accidents) to date this year, the average fine paid to fix responsibility for each fatal mishap totaled only $2.66. There were no jail sentences imposed. In only three cases have manslaughter charges been filed. In only six of the 12 fatalities in Salt Lake City have any kind of charges been filed.

The story reported that the $2.66 is the average Utah fine assessed for the blame in a fatal accident. The fine averaged $5.76 in Salt Lake and only $1.95 elsewhere in Utah.

The lengthy story then listed a summary of all 84 accidents.

This report, given during the middle of World War II, obviously sought to reduce traffic fatalities and was a precursor to safety campaigns by the Utah Highway Patrol.

(Note that $2.66 in 1943 monetary value is equal to $38.80 in today’s dollar values.)

                        The Great Salt Lake north of Fremont Island.

-“Herd of stampeded cattle meet death in the Lake” was an April 12, 1900 headline in the Salt Lake Herald newspaper.

Some 200 head of cattle were grazing in a pasture between Hooper and Syracuse. Then, Joseph Manning of Hooper reported that a great storm arose and the herd stampeded to the west and even the Great Salt Lake didn’t stop them.

Ultimately the cattle ended up more than a dozen miles to the northwest, near Little Mountain.

“Many of them were swamped in the mud and perished,” the story reported. “Others waded out till they became exhausted, and still others swam for miles. Some were found eighteen miles from shore. In all, 41 perished. Four were extricated from the mud alive.”

The animals belonged to a variety of ranchers in Davis and Weber counties.

In its report of the cattle drowning, the Davis County Clipper newspaper stated that old time residents of the area said that the strong east canyon winds also used to drive cattle from the Farmington area way out west to Antelope Island.

-The first newspaper mention of fog in Utah territory was in the Deseret News of Dec. 15, 1853.

The report described the fog in Salt Lake City as very deep and dark, very much like the English fogs of fall, winter and spring.

          The Little Mountain area, as viewed from the north end of Fremont Island.

-Here’s how some Utah residents of 1881 helped the poor: “Tomorrow morning Mr. A. Greenwell and a party of nimrods are going to the Little Mountain (west of Ogden), in quest of rabbits. They say they will return in the evening, with 400 and distribute them to the hungry free gratis, on Fourth Street (of Ogden).” From the Ogden Herald, Nov. 8, 1881.

-Back in 1910, the early days of the automobile, travel was slow, particularly on rough and out-of-the-way roads. For example, the Ogden Standard newspaper of Feb. 28, 1910 reported that it took residents of Hooper some three hours to travel to Ogden. J.H. Fowles, a Hooper resident, said it ought to only take an hour to travel that distance. (Note it takes approximately 15-20 minutes to travel from Hooper to Ogden today.)

-The Salt Lake Tribune of Sept. 6, 1896 was a report of the Little Mountain area. It stated that the Native American settlers before the pioneers used Little Mountain as a chosen spot. They came to the spot to bury some of their dead.

                                                   The Kit Carson Cross on Fremont Island.


However, the same Tribune story displayed total ignorance over where the cross carved in stone on Fremont Island came from. This report stated the cross was already there when John C. Fremont and company arrived on the Isle in 1843. (In fact, team member Kit Carson himself carved that cross during their 1843 visit).

So, this newspaper report speculated that some earlier Christians – perhaps even Spanish missionaries must have visited the Island and carved that cross.

The Kit Carson Cross – A pre-Mormon relic in the Great Salt Lake

By Lynn Arave

PERHAPS the most legendary of pre-Mormon Pioneer artifacts in the Ogden area is the famous Kit Carson Cross on lonely Fremont Island in the Great Salt Lake.

Only about six inches long, this landmark dates back to Sept. 9, 1843 when frontier explorer Kit Carson carved it on solid rock while his frontier colleague, John C. Fremont, surveyed the area.

                                                               Fremont Island.

Fremont had dubbed the isle "Disappointment Island" for its barren nature, lack of game and water. Carson was apparently so bored that he chiseled a cross there. Writings of the exploration prove Carson made that cross.

                    The black rock where the Cross is located.

However, Carson’s biography states that he had converted to Catholicism from being a Protestant some years before his Fremont Island trek and so his cross could also possibly be viewed as somewhat of a Catholic symbol or relic – predating Mormonism,  that would become the area’s dominant religious less than five years later.

                                       John C. Fremont

Explorers Fremont and Carson, plus two other men followed the Weber River and used an "India rubber" boat of that day to float to the island that is directly west of present day Hooper. They hoped it was a paradise in the desert.  However, after making surveys, they left in disappointment. The only excitement came shortly after they left the island. They were threatened by an incoming thunderstorm and felt they had to frantically row for their lives to get off the wind-whipped Great Salt Lake.

The cross is found at the north end of Fremont Island on what is known as Castle Rock, the isle’s high point, rising some 800 feet above the average elevation of the GSL.

Unusual black rocks dominate this area and one of them contains the cross, seemingly small compared to these large rock monoliths. Other than a few metal lightning rods in the area, a deterrent to lightning-caused fires, this portion of Fremont Island has likely changed little in the 173 years since the cross was carved there.

Some 4 ½ years after Fremont/Carson and party were the first known white men to visit the Island, Mormon pioneers set foot on the isle on April 22, 1848. They named it "Castle Island," for the throne-like top on its north end (today’s Castle Rock).

Howard Stansbury, a U.S. government surveyor, came to Fremont Island in the summer of 1850. He officially named it after Fremont. However, in 1859 and for some years after, the Island was also known as “Miller’s Island,” when Dan Miller and Henry W. Jacob of Farmington had 153 sheep grazing there.

Brigham Young also exiled a Salt Lake City grave robber, Jean Baptiste, on Fremont Island in the spring of 1862. He was never seen again, but that is another tale for another day.

In addition, Salt Lake Probate Judge U. J. Wenner and his young family lived on Fremont Island for about four years. From 1886-1891. Wenner had tuberculosis and it was hoped the sea-like climate would temper his illness. However, he died on Fremont and was buried there. Later, his wife’s ashes were also buried nearby. (This occupation too is a separate story.)

Many Native America relics (arrowheads, tools and bowls) have been found on Fremont, indicating ancient inhabitation there.

Fremont Island is the long, thin-looking island, with a flat plateau on its north end, which is located directly west of Hooper.

The island also has a large segment that juts out to west, long enough to land an airplane on, though this segment is not visible along the Wasatch Front.

Note: Fremont Island is now owned by the State of Utah, after more than 150 years of various private owners.

                 Looking north across the length of Fremont Island.

(-Written by Lynn Arave and originally published in 2016 in the Ogden Standard-Examiner.)

The not so great Great Salt Lake

            

                        The dry docks at Antelope Island State Park.

THE Great Salt Lake isn't what it used to be.
In the mid-1980s, the GSL was a monster, out of control and threatening to flood the Salt Lake International Airport and I-80.
Now some 3 decades later, the lake is far smaller and the opposite is true -- what will low lake levels do to human health and wildlife?
Scientists of the late 19th Century really believed the Great Salt Lake was shrinking and would one day vanish. Several cycles over the next century proved they were wrong, or so it seemed.
With more and more lake inflow being diverted for irrigation and a historic drought in progress, those scientists might be more right than not.

                                       Antelope Island Boat Docks.

The lake's elevation as of this writing, on Oct. 13, 2015, is 4,192.6 feet above sea level. That's just 1.3 feet above its all-time measured low of 4,191.3 feet in 1963.
The GSL's all-time high mark was 4,211.6 feet in both 1986 and 1987, when the ballyhooed lake pumps were operating on its western shores.
The "average" elevation has always been considered to be 4,200 feet above sea level. However, now the reality is that average may no longer be valid. Sometime more like 4,194 feet above sea level might be more accurate for the 21st Century.

 One could walk to Fremont Island now, as the lake level is now almost 1.5 feet lower than what it needs to be for a huge natural sandbar, off the Antelope Island Causeway, to be above water.

What does a low lake mean?

-The deepest spot, more like a hole in the Great Salt Lake, is located just northwest of Fremont Island and south of the Lucin Cutoff railroad causeway. This spot is 34 feet deep when the lake is at that "normal" 4,200-foot elevation. Yet, now that deepest spot is just 15 feet.

-Antelope Island and Fremont Island in particular are no longer truly islands and are connected to land. Peninsula would be a more accurate term now -- Antelope Peninsula and the Fremont Peninsula.
A road or solid causeway to Fremont Island, assuming one had the money and state/environmental permission, would be far easier and cheaper to create now.

-The GSL can produce much more blowing dust now. From possible toxic chemicals to rumors of "pickled" sewage in the lakebed from before sewage treatment plans are possibilities.

                    The almost dry Farmington Bay from Frary Peak ridge.

-The dreaded "Lake effect" of winter snow storms is likely tuned down now. This effect could have less than half the punch it did 30 years ago.

-Less bird habitat is now available with less lake water and less inflow.

-The Great Salt Lake pumps are really relics now and have no need.

-The manmade causeway to Antelope Island and the Lucin Cutoff causeway will face far less erosion in the future.

-Boating on the GSL is more questionable now. Some marinas may be high and dry. Since the deepest lake spot is now just 15 feet, the average depth for boats may be closer to less than 10 feet and some too shallow for boats spots may exist here and there.

                Desolate salt flats around the Great Salt Lake are no mirages these days.

 Any upside to a lower GSL?

-Now might be a good time to explore the feasibility of another "Willard Bay" -- a diked off fresh water reservoir on the lake's former eastern shore. Perhaps one at Farnington Bay and another at the Salt Lake County end of the lake's footprint, would be possible ways to store excess runoff in the spring (assuming there is enough of that). 

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net

1922: When Antelope Island was in the running for a Utah State Prison

                              The north shore of Antelope Island.

“State prison may be moved. Committee named to consider Antelope Island proposition” was a Sept. 28, 1922 headline in the Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner.

In 2015 there was a lot of controversy about relocating the Utah State Prison from Draper. Eventually the green light was given to move the Prison to west of the Salt Lake Airport – despite protests from Salt Lake City leaders.

Back in 1922, the State Prison was still in its original location – where Sugar House Park is today, 2100 South and about 1700 East. However, an expanding Sugar House residential neighborhood was not deemed as be compatible with a prison.

                   Sugar House Park looking west across its lake.

Antelope Island, an undeveloped island except for one ranch, was considered a possible prison site. Of course, this move never took place. Decades later, the  prison moved to Draper, then in the wide open spaces.

Still, if Antelope Island had been chosen as a prison site back then, it is a surety that Antelope Island State Park would not exist and that some kind of permanent road – likely to the southern tip of Antelope Island – would have been constructed from the S.L. side.

In the 1950s, Fremont Island was also talked about as a future state prison site and that didn’t happen either, likely because of its isolation and high road building costs.

-There was a big fire on Antelope Island in early September of 1917. According to the Ogden Standard-Examiner of Sept. 5 that year, lightning started a big blaze on the dry isle and it could be seen from both S.L. and Ogden. Back in that era, Antelope Island support not only a large herd of buffalo, but had 400 head of U.S. Army horses stationed there for training purposes, as well as some 1000 head of cattle.

-“Antelope Island’s coyotes wiped out” was a Feb. 3, 1924 Ogden Standard-Examiner headline. Because of the island’s importance as a cattle range, poison and some hunters was used starting in 1921 and by 1924  had wiped out all the coyotes living on the island. Now sheep could be safely ranged there too.

-“Fish driven into Great Salt Lake was an Aug. 14, 1911 headline in the Standard-Examiner. It was reported that carp were introduced into Mud Lake, north of an adjacent to Bear Lake, a few years earlier. The carp multiplied exceedingly. However, the electric power company had drained Mud Lake in the early summer of 1911 and that forced all the carp into the Bear River. The carp were reportedly rolling down the Bear River toward Utah and were eventually expected to reach the Great Salt Lake, where they would die in its briny waters.

The same report stated that Bear Lake had known bottom and that 1,000 feet of cable had been used over the lake and still found no bottom below. That myth was prevalent in the early 20^th Century, but Bear Lake was eventually proven to be no more than 209 feet deep.

-NOTE: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net

From a ‘Lakemobile’ to a stroll to Fremont Island

  The "lakemobile" that Charles Stoddard used to cross the GSL to Fremont Island in.

                

                                            Fremont Island with a dry eastern bay  

By Lynn Arave

LIKE its larger cousin, Antelope Island to the north, 
Fremont Island isn’t always truly an isle at all.

A huge natural sandbar, during low lake levels, can offer dry land access to the somewhat mysterious, privately-owned “island.”

Growing up in Hooper, directly east of Fremont Island, I had heard tales of a man from West Point who years earlier – when the Great Salt Lake was at very low levels – used to drive a special truck all the way to the Island over only six or so inches of water.

                     The Fremont Island Sandbar, far left, as seen from Fremont Island.

Later, I found out his name was Charles Stoddard. He leased Fremont Island in 1932 and began ranching sheep there.

However, not wanting to rely completely on boat travel, Stoddard put caterpillar-like chains on the rear wheels of a Model “A” Ford Truck and created what others called a “Lakemobile” to access Fremont Island for several decades.

This natural sandbar, that Stoddard first discovered, was large, but not straight. So, during the low lake levels of the early 1930s, he put upright railroad ties along the shallowest part of the sandbar, from west of Syracuse – some 10 miles -- to Fremont Island, to mark its course. Then as the lake level rose, he had what David E. Miller in “The Desert Magazine” of May of 1949 referred to a “Salt Lake Trail on the Desert” to follow.

               The "Lakemobile" arrives on Fremont Island for the first time in 1934.


So, he basically drove a truck in the middle of the Great Salt Lake!

  The Fremont Island sandbar,from Fremont, as it snakes to the Antelope Island Causeway.

His only major problem was an ice floe that struck his truck in March of 1942. Although the lake’s briny waters do not freeze easily, the incoming fresh river water can and thus a small iceberg hit his truck and knocked it on its side.

  Charles Stoddard fixing the Wenner graves on Fremont Island. --Photo courtesy of Stoddard Family. He used rock from the old Wenner home to create part of the rock memorial.

Stoddard managed to upright the truck and get the ice away, but the Lakemobile ended up in a bog and wasn’t freed until more than eight months later -- the following November. Even then, he had to replace the truck’s salty motor oil and spark plugs and use kerosene to loosen the cylinders. Then the old truck started up and moved again.

                   Charles Stoddard's boat pulled by horses to reach Fremont Island in 1947.

Stoddard was also known to use a small boat, mounted on a two-wheeled trailer, and pulled by a team of horses to access the Island. He even told Miller that some youths once rode bicycles to the Island, while riders on horseback and even a touring car had successfully made the trip too.

                  Sheep travel the sandbar to Fremont Island in the 1940s.

By the early 1940s, the sandbar was briefly, but almost completely above water late one summer season. So, instead of having to boat sheep to and from the Island, Stoddard was able to herd them on mostly dry ground. Only the south end of the sandbar was then under water, just a few inches deep.

By 1948, the GSL had risen two feet in seven years and Stoddard had to use boat travel his remaining years of ranching.

  Horses used to traverse the sandbar to Fremont Island in 1943 to go on the Phantom Coyote hunt.

Twenty years later, in the late 1960s, as a teenager, I noticed two black posts and a gate sticking up in the water when traveling the newly built dirt road causeway to Antelope Island. I surmised that marked Stoddard’s “road.”

     The "black gate posts" circa 1980, as they marked the start of the sandbar to Fremont Island.

In the summer of 1979, a friend, Mich Oki, and I tried wading out to those black posts and found the water not only 4 feet deep there, but very muddy ground to try and wade through. The Great Salt Lake kept rising for another seven years.

 June 1982: Steve Hubbard and Larry Saunders as they prepare to explore Fremont Island after landing on its southeast tip after about a seven mile paddle in a canoe.


In June of 1982, two friends (Steve Hubbard and Larry Saunders) and I canoed about 14 miles roundtrip from Antelope Island to Fremont Island. We also had permission and visited the island at length. Wild ponies roamed the island back then, amid some exotic sheep.

(John C. Fremont and Kit Carson used an inflatable rubber boat when they visited the island in 1843. I also took a motor boat trip there in the late-1990s.)

The causeway soon washed out and was later rebuilt higher.
I tested the water around the gate post several more times over the years. They were completely under water in the mid-1980s, as the Great Salt Lake reached a historic high mark.

                                The ride to Fremont Island.


My parents too were fascinated by Fremont Island and they hired a boat and its captain in the early 1990s and we visited Fremont Island and waded to its shores for a brief visit, lacking permission to roam the isle.

       My family on Fremont, Mark, Norma, Gene and Wayne Arave, with boat off shore.

             Taylor Arave near the Fremont Sandbar in about 2002.

               Taylor Arave and what's left of the back gate posts in 2002.

 Enter the 21^st Century and the lake was receding again and now the posts were barely under water. But, again bogs near the causeway were hard to wade through.

          Mike Spencer, September 2004, resting after a 6-mile walk to Fremont Island.

Then, in the late summer of 2004, the lake was almost lower than it had ever been. Myself and two different friends, Mike Spencer and Ryan Layton, walked about 13 miles roundtrip on 100 percent dry ground to the edge of Fremont Island and back. We found a huge old anchor, antique bottles and even tires along our stroll of what used to be under up to 18 feet of briny water in the mid-1980s during the lake’s historic high mark.

              Taylor Arave in a dry bay around Fremont Island.

Again, in 2008, with permission to access the Island, I and my youngest son, Taylor, again walked the same dry sandbar route and roamed the isle. Then, we also ATV tracks and evidence of their visit to the island over the sandbar.

                       ATV tracks across the usually underwater GSL.

(As a sidelight: there is evidence too, that Kit Carson may not carved his cross on the island’s north end out of boredom, but rather as testimonial of his conversion to the Catholic Church.)

  Our bicycles, a few hundred yards off the Antelope Causeway. We rode them to the sandbar, as parking on the causeway after my first walk to Fremont is now prohibited

Thus, people have boated, floated, driven, bicycled and even ridden on horseback to Fremont over the years. There’s even a rugged airstrip on the island’s western side.

Fremont Island, though mostly barren, is a magical place that somehow always beckons you to return.

 Taylor pointing upward to show that the water was more than 12-feet deep here in the mid-1980s around Fremont Island in the bay off the island.

(-Originally published in the Ogden Standard-Examiner on Oct. 23-24, 2014.)

Note: Fremont Island is now owned by the State of Utah, after more than 150 years of various private owners.

-NOTE 2: The author, Lynn Arave, is available to speak to groups, clubs, classes or other organizations about Utah history at no charge. He can be contacted by email at: lynnarave@comcast.net