1900: When you could walk to Antelope Island; Plus, when a sandbar helped build a causeway

YOU could walk to Antelope Island in the year 1990, thanks to a low level of the Great Salt Lake. Yes, lakeside resorts were struggling in mud to keep patrons happy, but access to the former "Church Island" was easier.
"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.
"Great Salt Lake has been known as the 'Dead Sea of America.' If it is not dead, it certainly gives every evidence being in the throes of dissolution," the Tribune stated.
The four-mile stretch from the eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake to Antelope Island was a glistening stretch of sand that year. And, some sand had been used to create a small bar to reach the isle, without a boat.
The Tribune reported that most were using horses and wagons to cross the lakebed to the Island. One man said it required just 35 minutes to cross from the former Jeremy Salt Works to reach Antelope.

                                                 The eastern bay of Antelope Island.

Further north, there were more uneven and muddy conditions and even some small pools of stagnant water.
The receding lake also does not create a pretty scene, the Tribune reported.
"The space left dry by the receding waters is anything but inviting in its appearance. Here and there are decaying hulks of rowboats and sailboats, several of which were once in use at Garfield beach years ago and there is also a vast quantity of other wreckage," the Tribune story stated.
The Tribune also mentioned a special tree, now a landmark, from which hunters surprised and killed a "ferocious buffalo," a few years ago who roamed the Island. 
Little amounts of wheat had been raised on Antelope Island in 1900, because of the dry climate. However, the isle had apparently had some successful farming performed on it in previous years.

                The causeway as viewed from the northeast tip of Antelope Island to the mainland.

-JUMP FORWARD almost seventy years and the newly opened official causeway road  from Syracuse to Antelope Island was in use. And, surprisingly, it was sand from the natural sandbar that runs to Fremont Island that helped construct that original causeway. (It washed out multiple times from the 1970s and into the mid-1980s.)

The sandbar (left side of photograph) from Fremont Island (foreground) to the causeway road. Antelope Island is in the distance on the right side of the picture.

"Gravel for the roadbed was obtained through a trade between the county and state," the Davis County Clipper of April 28, 1967 reported. "The State brought out 200 loads of gravel to the sire in return for an equal amount of salted sand scooped from a sandbar which leads to Fremont Island and connects to the new road."
At the time, in 1967, the road was still a dirt one and was not paved until the early 1970s.

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

-THAT SAME SANDBAR to Fremont Island has also been a boating hazard at times. The Clipper of Jan. 22, 1987 reported that four men were stranded for 14 hours in the Great Salt Lake after running aground on the sandbar.
The men were headed to the privately owned Fremont Island to hunt sheep when they became stranded, just west of Howard Slough. They were spotted by helicopter and another boat was launched to rescue them. Whether the men had permission to hunt on the private island was unknown.

Kodachtrome Basin:: A wonderland of pale spires, cliffs and arches

                                                              Grosvenor Arch.                  Photo by Ravell Call


By Lynn Arave

MILLIONS of years ago, springs and spouting geysers welled upward in an area not unlike portions of today's Yellowstone National Park. Over time the source of these waters dried up; the sediment-filled spouts solidified, surrounded by a landscape of Entrada sandstone. More eons passed, and while the softer sandstone eroded away grain by grain, the plugs of these mineral faucets - made of harder stuff - proved more resilient.

Today, frozen in time, they're a geologic phenomenon and a centerpiece of Kodachrome Basin State Park, a sparsely visited wonderland of pale spires (those ancient cores), cliffs and arches - such as the spectacular Grosvenor - carved in the region's malleable sunset-colored sandstones.For many years the area, known as both Thorley's Pasture (for rancher Tom Thorley) and Thorny Pasture (for the cactus there), and for a time as Chimney Rocks, was a popular local attraction - especially after a better dirt road made access easier in the 1930s.

Kodachrome leaped to national notoriety when it was featured in the September 1949 issue of National Geographic magazine in an article by writer-photographer Jack Breed about south-central Utah proclaiming the "First Motor Sortie Into Escalanteland." The expedition into a basically unsettled area of the Colorado Plateau involved 15 adventurers, three Jeeps, two trucks and 35 horses. Because of the "astonishing variety of contrasting colors in the formations," they applied the name "Kodachrome Flat" to the area.

For some time there was talk that Kodak, which owned the term "Kodachrome" for its slide film, opposed such use of its product's name. Eventually, however, that proved not to be the case, and today Kodachrome Basin has Kodak's blessing. (In fact, official park brochures used to list Kodak as the "official film" of the state park.)

The state of Utah bought land for the preserve in 1962. But the first real improvements - a campground and ranger residence - weren't built until 1974. In 1988, modern restrooms and hot showers were added.
The park had only 1,000 visitors per year in its early days, but by 1992, visits had multiplied to 64,000.
The naming of neighboring Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in the mide-1990s raised interest in Kodachrome too.

The desert climate and slickrock also make the Kodachrome vicinity a great place to visit in late fall or early spring, when many other Utah state parks are too cold for a comfortable visit. 

The park can also have a wide temperature range in a single day because of its 5,800-foot elevation. 
There are at least 67 chimneylike "sand pipes" in the Kodachrome area. Such spires, found nowhere else in the world, are up to 52 meters high. The most significant are found in the Grand Parade area near the campground.

Chimney Rock, a giant thumb rising from the plateau, is one of the most popular scenic attractions. A dirt road leads to the formation about a mile from the campground on the park's east side. The short but bumpy ride can be quite a sight, as in late summer when sightseers pass through a gigantic field of blooming sunflowers.

                                  The approach to Grosvenor Arch.                               Photo by Ravell Call.

Grosvenor Arch, about 10 miles southeast of Kodachrome, is perhaps the area's most famous formation - and deservedly so.

A beautiful and impressive stone rainbow on the lip of a soft-orange mesa, Grosvenor (pronounced Grove-nor) was named by the National Geographic expedition in 1949 in honor of the society's president, Gilbert Grosvenor. The arch, with a 99-foot span, tops out at 152 feet above the ground.

Breed described the arch in his 1949 article:

"This striking natural bridge is carved of creamy rock, a rarity in a land of brilliant reds. Actually it is a double arch, with the larger span on the end of a buttress that cuts from the main sandstone butte."
A smaller arch within the state park bears Tom Shakespeare's name. The former manager of the park discovered it in the 1970s while looking for a coyote den. His name was selected over options like "Tom Thumb's Arch" as a result of a local contest. A side road on the way to Chimney Rock leads to the Shakespeare trailhead, where a sandy, 600-yard trail leads to the arch.

Hiking is a popular park pastime. Besides the Shakespeare Arch trail, visitors can explore the Panorama, Eagle View and Angels Palace trails. Panorama is the longest round trip at 3 miles.

A visit to Kodachrome can be a pleasant, half-day jaunt or a camping and hiking destination. The state park offers a modicum of solitude - a quality that's now just a memory in the region's other, more-crowded national and state parks.
\
- TO REACH KODACHROME: Kodachrome Basin State Park is south of Cannonville, off U-12, one of Utah's "scenic byways." The park is about 290 miles from Salt Lake City. 

When Goblin Valley was Mushroom Valley

By Lynn Arave


GOBLIN Valley was originally known as Mushroom Valley.
That's what Arthur L. Chaffin, who roamed the area and was the first known white man to report seeing the formations called it in the 1930s.
Chaffin starting exploring the area in 1932, when there weren't even any established roads there. 
He finally bragged about this "Mushroom" Valley" in 1949 he took some outside visitors along with him to see it.

Utahns were impressed. By 1964, it was purchased and designated as a Utah State Park. "Goblin" won out as a name, being more mysterious and colorful than a mushroom title.
However, the road into Goblin Valley was not paved until about 1990. It used to be a wash-boardy sandy road for the final 7 miles or so to the park.

(-The Davis County Clipper newspaper of Oct. 30, 1964 ran a feature on the new state park.)