SALT LAKE CITY — As the future of the Great Salt Lake is threatened, many have started to reminisce about the lake’s “glory days.”
"Back in the 1800s, there would be 10,000, 15,000 people that would come out here to the Saltair Resort on a weekend and they'd watch the sailboat regattas,” said Great Salt Lake Park Manager Dave Shearer.
Now, a rise in tourism and changing attitudes toward the lake beg the question: What if some of the lake’s best days are yet to come?
"Everybody that comes out to the Great Salt Lake, especially from the Wasatch Front, once they come out here they're like, ‘Oh, I had no idea! I thought it was this smelly place too,'" Shearer said. "And they didn't know that it's not smelly — it's a beautiful place and a lot of nature to see. Beautiful sunset."
Bonnie Baxter, the director of the Great Salt Lake Institute, says since she began speaking out about the lake's decline, people of all generations have told her they didn’t realize how important the lake was to them until it was threatened.
"I got poems from students, but I got phone calls from lots of older people who grew up in Utah and they would tell me stories about they used to sit on my grandpa's porch and watch the sunsets,” Baxter said.
As the lake’s quirky characteristics continue to grow in popularity locally and worldwide, Shearer and Baxter are hopeful the next generation will experience their own Great Salt Lake glory days.
"I think as long as we have water in the lake here at the Great Salt Lake Marina, it's just going to continue to expand,” Shearer said. “I think it's a new resurgence of the lake.”
