Great Salt Lake

The briny inland sea that claimed its first steamers

Great Salt Lake · Utah · United States

The Great Salt Lake supported a brief but genuine steamboating era hauling railroad ties and freight across its briny expanse.

Steamers built for the Union Pacific tie trade and early Mormon commerce crossed the lake from the 1860s onward. Storms on the shallow, violent water wrecked several of them, and the salty, buoyant water preserves a strange archaeological record.

Records in These Waters

Available

General Garfield

AH-WR-0418

Black Rock, Utah

Out of service by March 1882; destroyed by fire at an unspecified later date near Black Rock · Steamboat

Available

Kate Connor

AH-WR-0190

Antelope Island, Utah

April 1872 · Steamboat

Available

Timely Gull

AH-WR-0306

Antelope Island, Utah

Reported broken loose from her mooring and lost during a storm in the 1850s · Sailboat

Available

W.E. Marsh No. 4

AH-WR-0305

Great Salt Lake State Park, Utah

Last recorded in service in the 1950s with the Sea Scouts; exact date and cause of sinking unknown · Work Boat