Antelope Island
Antelope Island, with an area of 42 square miles, is the largest of ten islands located within the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The island lies in the southeastern portion of the lake, near Salt Lake City and Davis County, and becomes a peninsula when the lake is at extremely low levels. It is protected as Antelope Island State Park.
The first known non-natives to visit the island were John C. Frémont and Kit Carson during exploration of the Great Salt Lake in 1845, who "rode on horseback over salt from the thickness of a wafer to twelve inches" and "were informed by the Indians that there was an abundance of fresh water on it and plenty of antelope". It is said they shot a pronghorn antelope on the island, and in gratitude for the meat, they named it Antelope Island.
Antelope Island holds populations of pronghorn, bighorn sheep, American bison, porcupine, badger, coyote, bobcat, mule deer, and millions of waterfowl. The bison were introduced to the island in 1893, and the Antelope Island bison herd has proven to be a valuable genetic pool for bison breeding and conservation purposes. The bison do well, because much of the island is covered by dry, native grassland.
The geology of Antelope Island consists mostly of alluvial plains with prairie grassland on the north, east and south of the island, along with a mountainous central area of older Precambrian metamorphic and igneous rocks and late Precambrian to Paleozoic sedimentary rocks, covered by a thin layer of Quaternary lake deposits, colluvium and alluvium. The Precambrian deposits on Antelope Island are some of the oldest rocks in the United States, older even than the Precambrian rocks at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.
State park
Antelope Island State Park is a Utah state park and the entire island is included in the park. Early in the 20th century, because of its wildlife and scenery, some suggested that Antelope Island should become a national park, but the movement never came to fruition. When the Utah State Parks System was created, proposals were made to turn Antelope Island into Antelope Island State Park and the proposal gradually gathered public support, but Antelope Island was privately owned at the time. Originally, Antelope Island was used as a ranch for cattle and sheep, starting from the earliest days of the arrival of the Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints controlled the ranch on the island from 1848 until approximately 1870. The island was purchased in 1870 by John Dooly Sr., and he established the Island Improvement Company, which managed the island and ranches from 1884 until 1981. The State of Utah purchased the northern part of the island in 1969, and acquired the remainder in 1981 when the state purchased the historical Fielding Garr Ranch. Subsequently, the cattle and sheep were removed. Antelope Island State Park was established in 1981 as part of the Utah State Parks System.The island is accessible via a 7-mile causeway from Syracuse in Davis County. Access from Interstate 15 is via exit 332, then west along Antelope Drive. The island's shore is mostly flat with beaches and plains to the base of the mountains on the island. These steep mountains are visible from most of the northern Wasatch Front, reaching a maximum elevation of, which is about above the level of the lake.
Antelope Island State Park operates a 10-watt travelers' information station on 530 kHz AM. The transmitter is on the south side of the causeway near the island. This station can be heard in Ogden and as far south as Salt Lake City. It carries information about the park's hours of operation & promotes upcoming events that the state park coordinates.
Antelope Island State Park has approximately 280,000 visitors in 2010. It was the fifth most-visited state park in Utah.
Visitor center
In February 2024, the Miller family foundation announced a $2.2 million donation to support water conservation efforts through the Antelope Island Learning Center. The related efforts including renovation of the learning center and the addition of a theater are being coordinated with the Utah Department of Natural Resources and Utah Water Ways.History
Native Americans
evidence dates the earliest habitation of Native Americans in Utah to about 10,000 to 12,000 years ago. Paleolithic people lived near the Great Basin's wetlands, which had an abundance of fish, birds, and small game animals. Big game, including giant bison, mammoths and ground sloths, were also attracted to the water sources. Over the years, the megafauna disappeared, while American bison, mule deer and pronghorn became more predominant.Around 8000 BC, this population was replaced by the Desert Archaic people, who sheltered in caves near the Great Salt Lake. Relying more on gathering than the previous Utah residents, their diet was largely made of cattails and other salt tolerant plants such as pickleweed, burro weed and sedge. Red meat appears to have been a luxury. The Desert Archaic people used nets and the atlatl to hunt water fowl, small animals and pronghorns. Artifacts include nets woven with rabbit skin and plant fibers, gaming sticks, woven sandals, and animal figures made from split-twigs. About 3,500 years ago, lake levels rose and the population of Desert Archaic people appears to have dramatically decreased.
Artifacts discovered at Antelope Island State Park show that the island was occupied by prehistoric peoples more than 6,000 years ago. There are forty freshwater springs on Antelope Island. The Fielding Garr Ranch was built near the strongest and most consistent of the springs. Archaeologists have determined that human activity has taken place near these springs for at least 1,000 years.
Fielding Garr Ranch
The first Anglo-Americans to reach the island were John C. Fremont and Kit Carson. They explored Antelope Island in 1845 and named the island for the herds of grazing pronghorn. Captain Howard Stansbury used the island as a base. He mapped the lake and attempted to locate where the waters of the lake drained in an attempt to find a waterway to the Pacific Ocean. The first permanent settler on the island was Fielding Garr. Garr was sent to the island by LDS Church to establish a ranch for the "church tithing herds". The Fielding Garr Ranch was owned and operated by the church until the 1870s for the purpose of providing funds for the Perpetual Emigration Fund. This fund financed the immigration of Mormon converts from Europe to Utah. The ranch house, built in 1848, still stands and is the oldest Mormon-built home that is still on its original foundation, in Utah.The building of the Transcontinental Railroad in 1869 opened the rest of the island to settlement by homesteaders. The first federal surveys of the island revealed that only the area surrounding the Fielding Garr Ranch had been improved. This discovery gave the federal government the authority to open the island to settlement under the Homestead Act. Settlement on the island was unsuccessful and by 1900 most of the settlers had not improved their claims and, except for the ranch, the island was free of human habitation.
John Dooly Sr. purchased the island for one million dollars and established the Island Improvement Company. Dooly is responsible for the introduction of the bison, and the foundation of the Antelope Island bison herd. He brought twelve bison to the island. Four bulls, four cows, and four calves were transported by boat on February 15, 1893. At the time there were fewer than 1,000 head of bison in all of North America. Historians speculate that Dooly introduced the herd to the island for commercial purposes with the idea of establishing a rare opportunity for hunters to take the nearly extinct American bison. The twelve bison became the foundation of the Antelope Island bison herd that numbers between 500 and 700 animals, making it one of the largest and oldest publicly owned American bison herds in the United States.
John Dooly Jr. assumed responsibility for the day-to-day operation of the ranch in about 1902. He focused on raising sheep. The Fielding Garr Ranch became one of the most industrialized and largest sheep ranching operations in the western United States. A failing wool market in the 1950s caused a shift in focus on the ranch. Sheep were dropped in favor of cattle. The cattle ranch worked as one of the largest cattle operations in Utah until 1984 when the ranch was sold to the state to go with of the island that had been purchased by the state in 1969. The last herds of cattle were removed from the island in 1984 after an extremely snowy winter that caused the death by starvation of about 350 heifers and calves. The meltwater from the heavy snows flooded the causeway, limiting access to the island. Ranchers resorted to hiring barges and making multiple trips from shore to island to salvage their stock.
Protected status
The process of changing Antelope Island from a privately owned ranch to a state park took many years. During the early 20th century there was talk of the island being acquired by the federal government for the establishment of a national park.A. H. Leonard purchased the herd of bison from the Dooly family in 1926. Leonard intended to sell the herd to zoos. He found it impossible to get the bison off the island due to the water level and the drafts and sizes of the boats that were available to him. At this point he offered to sell the herd to the federal government if a national park were to be established on the island. Time magazine cites "Congressional apathy" as being the reason the island and bison herd were not protected.
Senator Frank E. Moss of Utah asked the National Park Service consider the Great Salt Lake for inclusion in the National Park System in 1959. The study had high praise for Antelope Island as a potential national park, but found "little else worthwhile about the Great Salt Lake". The National Park Service was concerned with a lack of planning by the State of Utah and the fact that the lake was used as a dumping site for municipal and industrial waste. The Park Service was impressed by the scenic and recreational possibilities of the northern end of Antelope Island, describing it as the "most impressive site of the lake." The qualities of the island were not enough to persuade the park service to seek the creation of a national park encompassing the Great Salt Lake. The park service cited years of "mismanagement, apathy, and lack of any coordinated plan for its proper development." Sewage from Salt Lake City that was being dumped untreated into the lake at the time and waste from a smelting facility on the southern end of the lake were two of the greatest sources of pollution. The Park Service did express interest in safeguarding the lake since it is a remnant of the Pleistocene. The Park Service also noted a lack of recreation on the lake and an inaction by the state to positively respond to an earlier request for the formation of a state park.
Antelope Island State Park was established in 1969 as Great Salt Lake State Park. At the time the facilities at the park were minimal. Temporary shower facilities were constructed and available for a "long weekend" over the Memorial Day weekend of 1969. Boating facilities were also available on a limited basis.
In 1971 the directors of the Golden Spike Empire, Inc., a local civic group that sought to promote the Great Salt Lake area as a tourist destination, recommended that all of Antelope Island be purchased. The group encouraged the development of the state park on the northern end of the island. GSE encouraged the establishment of a national monument on the remainder of the island. Davis County commissioners were against the establishment of a national monument citing the "look but don't touch" rules of national monuments. The local government was in favor of the state park and encouraged its development as a means of attracting tourists and increasing county revenues.
The Fielding Garr Ranch was purchased by the state in 1982 at a cost of $4.5 million. Access to the park was limited to a causeway on the southern end of the park at Saltair that was built in the 1950s until a northern causeway was completed in 1969. The park hosted a "moderate number" of visitors during the 1960s and 1970s. Visitation came to a stop in 1983 when floodwaters washed out both causeways. Cars did not return to the park until 1993 when the northern causeway was re-opened.