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
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
Postcard image of Black Rock and Black Rock Resort (no longer standing)
Location	2.5 miles (4.0 km) west of jct. UT 202 and I 80
Coordinates	40.72503°N 112.22774°W / 40.72503; -112.22774
Area	6.81 acres (2.76 ha)[1]
NRHP reference No.	100006332[2]
Added to NRHP	March 24, 2021

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

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]