Black Rock Site

Great Salt Lake landmark of trail, survey, and resort history

Black Rock Site is a National Register property (listed 2021) on Great Salt Lake’s southern shore near Lake Point, about 15 miles from downtown Salt Lake City on the west side and in view of Interstate 80. The rock itself stands in Tooele County; associated resort foundations straddle the Salt Lake–Tooele county line. Areas of significance are entertainment/recreation and exploration/settlement. Period of significance is 1846–1959. NPS California National Historic Trail pages list it as a certified trail site, its management resting with Utah’s Division of Forestry, Fire, and State Lands (FFSL).

The monolith is limestone and quartzite of the Kessler Formation — rock formed under an inland sea hundreds of millions of years ago, later thrust into the Oquirrh Mountains and emplaced on younger lake sediments by landslide. It rises about 39 feet high, roughly 130 by 60 feet in plan, above oolitic sand beaches. Five concrete pad foundations from the last Black Rock Resort era (ca. 1940s–1950s) remain; all standing resort architecture is gone.

Trail, mapping, and bathing

European-American names for the rock appear in 1846–1847. The Donner Party, traveling the Hastings Cutoff, used “Black Rock” in later recollection; within days of arriving in the valley in July 1847, Brigham Young and other Latter-day Saint leaders bathed here — the first well-documented Euro-American recreational use of the lake. Fourth of July pilgrimages from Salt Lake City began by 1851. Captain Howard Stansbury’s 1849–1851 federal survey used Black Rock as a triangulation station and lake-level reference; Sir Richard Burton described bathing and picnic ground at the site in 1862. An 1875 pillar for measuring lake level was among the earliest scientific depth instruments on the lake.

Resort development followed. Informal recreation in the 1850s–1860s became a full summer resort by the mid-1870s with railroad dinner-station service; by the 1880s Black Rock was the largest of the Great Salt Lake resorts, with bath houses, swings, and picnic facilities. Successive operators ran facilities into 1959, when the last resort closed. Wagon roads and later the Lincoln Highway passed the south edge; the rail corridor and I-80 later followed the same shoreline alignment.

Visiting today

FFSL manages the site as public land returned largely to natural processes. NPS trail guidance describes a designated parking area and a gravel walking path; a gate typically keeps vehicles short of the rock, with roughly 0.4 mile remaining on foot or bike. Do not drive on the lake bed — state law and concrete barriers enforce that limit. Graffiti has been a recurring problem; cleanup work in 2020 restored much of the rock’s natural surface. Amenities are minimal: parking and path, not a full visitor center. Check current FFSL and Great Salt Lake State Park access conditions before relying on any side road. No National Register ticket is required; treat the monolith and foundation pads as a historic landscape, not a climb-at-will playground.