Black Rock (Great Salt Lake)

The Black Rock on Great Salt Lake near Lake Point, Utah is a historic landmark. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2021 as part of the Black Rock Site.[2][3] The site includes Black Rock and foundation ruins of the former Black Rock Resort.[1]

Black Rock Site
Looking northwest towards the Great Salt Lake viewing the southern face of Black Rock.
Black Rock (Great Salt Lake) is located in Utah
Black Rock (Great Salt Lake)
Black Rock (Great Salt Lake) is located in the United States
Black Rock (Great Salt Lake)
Location2.5 miles (4.0 km) west of jct. UT 202 and I 80
Coordinates40.72503°N 112.22774°W / 40.72503; -112.22774
Area6.81 acres (2.76 ha)[1]
NRHP reference No.100006332[2]
Added to NRHPMarch 24, 2021

The site was the location, in 1847, of "the first recreational bathing in the Great Salt Lake in recorded history."[4]

The ill-fated Donner Party, taking the Hastings Cutoff alternative route to California, came by in 1846. Journal entries and interviews describe the Donner Party meeting the "Hastings Trail" on the south side of the Great Salt Lake in August 1846. In later interviews Donner Party member, Reed, was quoted multiple times saying that they had met Lansford Hastings near the landmark (on the eastern border of Lake Point) known as Black Rock and that they were the ones who had given the rock its name.[5]

The rock was described in 1870 by travel guide writer Fitz Ludlow as grim and ugly, yet part of a charming scene:

"A fifteen minute [horse] ride, and Black Rock rose grim and ugly, like the foundation of some ruined tower...we had expected a grim and desolate landscape; a sullen waste of brine, stagnating along low ready shores, black as Acheron, gloomy as the sepulcher of Sodom. Never had Nature a greater surprise for us. The view is one of the most charming which could be imagined." (Ludlow 1870:385)[1]

As depicted by Alfred Lambourne

It has been depicted in landscape paintings and lithographs of many artists including Alfred Lambourne, George M. Ottinger, Waldo Midgley, James Taylor Harwood, and Albert Tissandier.[1]

The Black Rock itself measures approximately 39 feet (12 m) tall upon an approximate 130 by 60 feet (40 m × 18 m) base.[1] Over the years, it has been an isolated rock out in the lake, or upon a peninsula into the lake.[4]

While the Black Rock is entirely in Tooele County, the entire site listed is an area about 300 by 800 feet (91 m × 244 m) and spans into Salt Lake County.[1]

See also

References
  1. Christopher W. Merritt (January 21, 2021). "National Register of Historic Places Registration: Black Rock Site" (PDF). Retrieved January 26, 2022.
  2. "Weekly List 2021 03 26". National Park Service.
  3. Mark Watson (April 29, 2021). "Black Rock listed on National Record of Historic Places". Tooele Transcript Bulletin.
  4. Christopher W. Merritt (April 25, 2021). "A Colorful History: Black Rock's History and Graffiti Woes". Utah Division of State History. Retrieved February 25, 2022.
  5. Rosen, M Daniel. "Donner Party Diary". donnerpartydiary. Retrieved January 31, 2023. We then followed Hasting's road around the Lake without incident worthy of notice until reaching a swampy section of the country west of Black Rock, the name we gave it". "We overtook Mr. Hastings at a place we called Blackrock, south end of Salt Lake, leaving McCutchen and Stanton here, their horses having failed.

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