Opened: Early June 1870
Closed: 1890s
Location: On the east shore, west of Syracuse.
Notes: After 1869, the railroad made it easier for travelers to come to Salt Lake City. Entrepreneurs in the area reacted quickly and resorts started popping up across the shores of the Great Salt Lake. The first of these was the idea of John W. Young.
The Utah Central Railroad, which was built between, Ogden and Salt Lake, ran close to the lake at times, making it a perfect place to build a resort. In early June of 1870, Young opened Lake Side, on the east shore. For several years, Lake Side was the premier resort. In June 1872 it became the home port of the City Of Corinne, a famous steamboat that had been traveling around the Great Salt Lake since 1871. The steamboat left Lake Side in 1875 to its new home at Lake Point. The resort struggled to survive until the 1890s when the lake level receded and the east shore was left in mud.
Opened: 1870
Closed: Mid-1880s
Location: A few miles southwest of where Saltair is today.
Notes: Opened by Jeter Clinton on the south shore. It was also known as Steamboat Landing, Steamboat Point or Clinton’s Landing but Lake Point was the one that stuck.
The steamboat City Of Corinne sailed here from Lake Side and from here to Monument Point on the north end of the lake in Spring Bay. In 1871 the Lake House was built and it was replaced in the fall of 1874 by a stone hotel. It was not as popular as the Lake Side resort, mainly because it could not be easily accessed by the railroad. This changed in 1873 when the new Salt Lake & Pioche Railroad was started. It would head from Salt Lake City straight out to Lake Point and then continue to go southwest to Pioche, Nevada. This railroad was later renamed the Utah Western Railway and then the Utah & Nevada Railroad.
In 1876, Lake Point was renamed Short Branch. A huge pavilion went up with about a hundred "bathrooms". In 1878, a competing resort opened at Black Rock. In 1881, Captain Thomas Douris, the skipper of the City Of Corrine (then named General Garfield), docked his boat at his own resort a little further northeast up the shore. Sometime around the mid-1880s, Short Branch closed down for good.
Opened: 1878
Closed: Between 1883 and 1890?
Re-Opened: 1933?
Location: On the south shore between Saltair and Lake Point Notes: This is where people had come to enjoy bathing in the Great Salt Lake from the arrival of the pioneers in 1847. The railroad didn’t reach here until 10 January 1875. The small resort was built in 1878 and was taken over by the Utah & Nevada Railroad in 1883. The railroad also bought the Garfield Beach resort in 1887 to compete with Lake Park. The resort closed sometime between 1883 and 1890. In 1891, “an effort was made in the Black Rock area to promote a real estate development envisaging privately owned beach cottages, but, notwithstanding the attraction of William Glasmann’s herd of buffalo, Buffalo Park made no hit with the public.”
In 1933, J.O. Griffith bought 3 1/2 acres of land to start a new Black Rock Beach. Black Rock & the other beaches on the south shore became more popular for motorists. During the war, gas & tire rationing slowed business for all of the resorts. But at the end of the war, more and more returned to the beaches & resorts.
Opened: 1881
Closed: 1904
Location: East of Black Rock
