Authors Terry Tempest Williams and Wallace Stegner love this island tucked along the eastern edge of the Great Salt Lake.
In his travels of Utah's wild places, Stegner saw stands of cottonwood trees protecting the lush setting near the old Fielding Garr ranch on the island's southern end and called the area "the only oasis on the Great Salt Lake."The secret is no longer well kept. After all, Antelope Island has a page on the World Wide Web.
As it wraps up its third year as a tourist attraction, Antelope Island is experiencing unprecedented popularity from public, private and government interests.
This year brought record numbers of sightseers and scientists. Private enterprise is flourishing. Complaints about the stinky shores are giving way to an appreciation of the island's delicate wildlife and historic value.
Visitors to the island are up 40 percent, and gate fees produced $350,000 for the state in the year that ended June 30. Another $140,000 went to Davis County, which collects $2 from the $6 charged to each car to drive the causeway that links the island to Syra-cuse.
Salt Lake County, with a plan for a causeway on the island's south end, wants in on the action. State parks officials have approved a $50,000 grant to study environmental and fiscal impact of a southern causeway.
An eight-mile roadway, with two miles across the Great Salt Lake, would follow the historic trail pioneers took to the island'ssouth shore, but the study is an introductory step and nothing more, said Mary Tullius, a parks spokeswoman.
"You can definitely feel things
on the move out here," said Tim Smith, a ranger with the state's Division of Parks and Recreation.
But as caretaker of the island's ecosystem, Smith and his fellow wildlife officials are gingerly balancing wildlife preservation with better access and exposure for Utahns.
"That's the great challenge," he said.
Better services and events bring tourists in.
The Buffalo Point Restaurant - which specializes in buffalo burgers - is building a spacious new deck. A new tour boat, the "Island Serenade," is at the tail end of a successful season. The division has hosted beach volleyball tournaments and moonlight bike rides.
In anticipation of this success, a 5,200-square-foot visitor's center, perched atop Lady Finger Ridge, should be open in September.
Late in the morning on a recent August day, one of this year's coyote pups grins as he jogs through the gumweed and sunflowers just off a dirt road down the island's east side.
On this same morning, two pronghorns - known more popularly as antelopes - tiptoe through rocks and grasses. Further down the road, some of the island's 700 now-famous bison roll in the dust and cluster in herds to the right and left.
The beach is dotted with avocets, Wilson's phalaropes and other migrating and nesting birds attracted to the island. They pose gracefully in the salty marshes, gorging on brine flies.
Smith wants more people to have this contact with wildlife. He wants visitors to see the mule deer, bobcats, jack rabbits and the tiny burrowing owl.
Since a causeway from Davis County was completed in 1993, business has increased steadily on the island. "Antelope Island is filling a niche in the northern Utah tourism picture that hasn't been filled before with a large, unique natural area," Smith said.
Southern Utah is filled with wild and wide open places like this, Smith said, but northern Utah is not.
As awareness about the island's birds, animals and geography has improved, researchers too have flocked to the area.
Last week, more than eight studies were going on at once.
One person studies the genetics and behavior of the pronghorn. Someone else evaluates the moth-er/daughter bison relationship. Another scientist studies the lack of diversity in the island's bison herd.
Geologists are looking at the shoreline and U.S. Fish and Wildlife is evaluating potential contamination by nearby industry, Smith said.
Last week, researchers found evidence that American Indians had visited the island at least 6,000 years ago. Utah Natural History Museum curator Duncan Metcalfe was part of a 12-member field study team that found nine new archaeological sites, and discovered artifacts that tell both pioneer and prehistoric stories.
A half-dozen quartzite and chert stone points probably were used for hunting, Metcalfe said. They found two beads and other remnants of items that were not in the place where they were originally dropped.
Three of the new sites will provide information about the pioneers who first occupied the island in 1845. There was a failed attempt at a mine, and an area that might have been a homestead. "There was a series of rock alignments, the function of which we're not yet sure," Metcalfe said.
Metcalfe said there is no evidence to indicate that American Indians actually lived on the island.
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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Salty questions pepper the island's personnel
"Where's the Great Salt Lake?" That's what one gate attendant at the beginning of the causeway to Antelope Island was asked recently. A strange question, considering the lake shore was readily visible only a hundred yards to the west. According to Tim Smith, a ranger at Antelope Island State Park, that's just one of many bizarre questions park employees have been asked recently. Here are some of the other questions Antelope Island Park employees and volunteers have fielded from visitors recently: - Where is the ferry? - Why are there buffalo here when it is called Antelope Island? - Is the lake really salty? - Where does the salt come from? - Who hauled the sand in for the beaches? - Can you really float in the lake? - What is that smell?