Great Salt Lake Shoreline Park

The Great Salt Lake is what remains of a far larger Ice Age lake called Lake Bonneville, which once covered much of western Utah hundreds of feet deep. When the climate warmed, most of that water evaporated away, leaving this shallow remnant in the lowest basin. Because the lake has rivers flowing in but none flowing out, the only way water leaves is by evaporating, which concentrates the minerals and makes the water intensely salty, saltier than the ocean.

That saltiness shapes everything along the shore. The flats are crusted white where the water has dried and left its minerals behind, and the edge of the lake wanders in and out from year to year as the water rises and falls. In recent decades the lake has shrunk dramatically, exposing broad new stretches of lakebed, a change that draws scientists and worries the region and that is visible right here at the shore.

The lake and its wetlands lie within the ancestral homeland of the Shoshone, Ute, Goshute, and Paiute peoples, who lived around the lake and its marshes and gathered its resources for thousands of years, and whose descendants remain in Utah today. The rich shoreline wetlands were, and are, a source of birds, eggs, plants, and salt.

When Mormon settlers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, the lake quickly became a curiosity and a landmark, and resorts and bathing pavilions later sprang up along its shores, where visitors floated effortlessly in the buoyant water. Those grand old resorts are long gone, but the pull of the lake remains, and today's shoreline parks carry on the tradition of coming out to meet the great salt water.

For all that its salty water holds almost no fish, the Great Salt Lake is one of the most important bird places on the continent. The shallows and shoreline swarm with tiny brine shrimp and brine flies, and those small lives feed staggering numbers of birds, millions of them, that stop here on their long migrations. Along this shore you may see avocets and stilts wading the shallows, phalaropes spinning on the water, and great clouds of shorebirds lifting at once.

In spring and fall the migration is at its peak and the birding is superb, with pelicans, gulls, ducks, and rafts of eared grebes gathering to feed. Bring binoculars and give yourself time to stand and watch, because the sheer numbers, and the sight of them wheeling against the water and sky, are among the great spectacles of the lake.

The signature experience here is the sunset. With the open water to the west and mountains beyond it, the light spreads across the still lake and sets the whole scene glowing pink and gold, one of the finest sunset spots close to the city. Mornings are quiet and cool, good for birds and for the long views before the day's haze sets in.

Spring and fall are the most comfortable seasons and the best for wildlife, while summer brings heat, brine flies, and sometimes a strong lake smell on still, warm days. Winter is stark and quiet, the flats sometimes rimed with frost. Whenever you come, the shore offers a plain, powerful look at the great lake and the changes it is living through.

The closest Boutel™ stays, so you can turn this stop into an overnight. Each is an independently owned, editorially selected place to stay.