SALTAIR
Saltair
The Great Salt Lake has been a popular recreation site since the earliest
days of white settlement, and a number of resorts have been built on its
shores since the first two were constructed in 1870. The most popular and
the best-remembered resort was the early Saltair. An important cultural
symbol, it is deeply imbedded in Utah's history and has long interested
artists, essayists, folklorists, and historians.
In 1893 the Mormon church built Saltair on the south shore of the Great
Salt Lake, about sixteen miles from downtown Salt Lake City. They also built
the railroad connecting the resort with the city. The church owned the resort
until 1906, at which time it was sold to a group of private Mormon businessmen.
The architect of Saltair was Richard K.A. Kletting, perhaps Utah's foremost
architect at the turn of the century and the designer of the Utah State
Capitol building.
In building Saltair the Mormon Church had two major objectives: in the words
of Mormon apostle Abraham H. Cannon, they wanted to provide "a wholesome
place of recreation" under church control for Mormons and their families;
and they also intended that Saltair be a "Coney Island of the West"
to help demonstrate that Utah was not a strange place of alien people and
customs. This was part of a larger movement toward accommodation with American
society that had begun in the early 1890s as church leaders made a conscious
decision to bring the church into the mainstream of American life. Saltair
was to be both a typical American amusement park and a place that provided
a safe environment for Mormon patrons. Those goals were somewhat incompatible,
and in less than a decade the second had clearly triumphed at the expense
of the first. Nonetheless, initially Saltair signified the Mormon Church's
intention to join the world while at the same time trying to minimize its
influence and avoid its excesses.
Saltair
Saltair opened on Memorial Day 1893, and was officially dedicated on
8 June. Its main attractions were always swimming in the Great Salt Lake,
where people could bob around like corks, thanks to its 25 percent salt
content, and dancing on what was advertised as the world's largest dance
floor; but the resort always had a wide range of other attractions. They
included a roller coaster, a merry-go-round, a ferris wheel, midway games,
bicycle races, touring vaudeville companies, rodeos, bullfights, boat rides
on the lake, fireworks displays, and hot-air balloons.
Saltair reached the peak of its popularity in the early 1920s when it was
attracting nearly a half-million people a year. However, in April 1925 it
burned to the ground. Raymond J. Ashton and Raymond L. Evans designed a
new pavilion along the general lines of the original one, and it was built
the next year, but the resort never regained its former popularity. During
the 1930s it had to battle the effects of the Great Depression; high maintenance
costs as winds and salt spray ate away at wood and paint; a $100,000 fire
in 1931; and receding lake levels, which in 1933 left it a half mile from
the water. Saltair closed down during World War II. It reopened with high
hopes after the war but continued to struggle, and it closed for good after
the 1958 season. During the 1960s efforts to save it failed, and it stood
forlorn and abandoned until fire destroyed it in November 1970.
In 1981 a new pavilion was built near the site of the original. It opened
in July 1982, but struggled to survive as the lake first reached its highest
level in history by 1984, putting the pavilion's main floor under five feet
of water. In the late 1980s the water began to recede.
In the fall of 1992, the Great Salt Lake Land Company, headed by Salt Lake
attorney and real estate developer Walter Plumb, bought the resort. Over
the next six months the new owners restored the structure and added a concert
stage where they intended to present local and national artists. It opened
on 8 June 1993--Saltair's one hundredth anniversary.
See: Nancy D. McCormick and John S. McCormick, Saltair (1985).
John S. McCormick
Saltair