"Try to sink" and "float like a cork." These were part of what may have been the most popular outdoor leisure-time activity in early Utah — swimming in the Great Salt Lake.
For close to 100 years, from the latter part of the 19th century until about 1950, lake floating was the thing for both locals and visitors. A half-dozen bathing resorts sprang up around the lake in the late 1800s, including the legendary Saltair.
In those days, probably the majority of northern Utah residents had immersed themselves in the briny waters of the Great Salt Lake. Today, the opposite is probably true — a vast majority of locals haven't ever taken a lake plunge or even a wade. What happened to weaken the lake's magnetic tourist qualities?
"It was more a novelty in those days," said Ron Taylor, Antelope Island State Park manager.
Even though 270,000 people visited Antelope Island last year, he said swimming isn't their main purpose for coming to the park. It's a secondary attraction at best.
Christopher Quick, park manager for the Great Salt Lake State Marina, near the south shore where the old Saltair was located, said he still sees an occasional tourist jump off the edge of his boat docks just to experience the lake's salt waters.
"The south-end beaches dried up about two years ago," he said. Because of the lake's currently low water level, a long walk through mud and over rocks is required elsewhere along the south shore to actually reach the water. Antelope Island has the best lake beaches today.
Steve Ingram, owner of Salt Island Adventures, which offers regular boat cruises on the Great Salt Lake and who has been steering boats on the lake for more than two decades, had a different view.
"My personal feeling is it's more a function of our society being re-oriented to outdoor activities," he said. Many of the East Coast's ocean bathing resorts also declined about the same time as Utah's Great Salt Lake beach hot spots did.
By the early 1950s, Utah's trolley and Bamberger rail systems also declined — victims to the personal freedom the automobile provided. More and more Utahns had cars. Road access to the state's mountains and lakes improved significantly. Movie houses were booming. Television came into almost every home. Lagoon amusement park attracted people away from the lake.
"There was more variety of things to do," Ingram said.
Still, he laments that access to the Great Salt Lake water is very poor today. While the healing effects of the Dead Sea in Israel are still very popular in the 21st century, the Great Salt Lake's nearly identical waters are not revered like they used to be.
"It's due to access," he said. "Improve that, and you'd see a growing popularity."
Ingram said every year he sees tourists with limited time struggle along the south lake shore — even in winter — to get into the water.
"They must stumble over sharp and jagged rocks," he said.
Ingram also believes the lake's waters have a bum rap these days of being stinky and undesirable.
"Swimming in the Great Salt Lake largely evolved into a tourist attraction as the lake dropped away from Saltair, and the fun of walking down the stairs into the water evaporated," Nancy D. and John S. McCormick wrote in their 1985 book, "Saltair."
"Salt Lakers more and more wanted to sit on the white sandy beaches and stay out of the water."
In the early 1950s, reports of raw sewage in the lake caused huge public outcries. By December of 1950, the state of Utah had built a 3.4-mile dike to keep Farmington Bay sewage away from Saltair. Then, sewage treatment plants were established and all water dumped into lake was treated, as it remains today. But the unclean image of the lake took hold, and lake swimming decreased significantly.
Wallace Gwynn, a geologist with the Utah Geological Survey, believes the lake's waters are fairly unpolluted these days. The lake's minerals help keep it clean, and raw city sewage hasn't been dumped in the lake for more than 45 years. He feels it's probably safe to swim in the lake — especially since you don't go underwater.
E-mail: lynn@desnews.com