After Magna, we have several options, and I think we should check out Saltair. It’s a fabled old resort on the southern shore of the Great Salt Lake, and Butko mentions it in the book as a popular stop for many early travelers along the Lincoln Highway, although it’s about a mile off the actual highway. Back in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was called the “Coney Island of the West,” complete with roller coaster, amusement park, a giant exotic structure and a train that came right out to it.
Now there’s still a big building there with towers and onion domes, but it’s just an approximation, a reminder of the glory that once was Saltair. We might just get a shot or two and keep moving. While Bob and Jarrett set up the tripod for a wide exterior shot from the parking lot, I go in to see if anyone is inside who might object to our taking pictures.
The building inside is mostly empty. Cavernous. A big barn of a place. But there are fences up that direct you toward the gift shop on the right, and there are several customers in there, and soon a young man asks if I have any questions. And he gives me a bit of the basics, and I explain our quest, and he’s understandably skeptical until I explain that we are funded by PBS and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and he says, “Fine. We’d be happy to do anything to help PBS.”
His name is Conor Murphy and he’s got good energy, so we decide to do a quick interview. He seems to know the history and tells it with a sense of humor. The first and second buildings at this site both were destroyed by huge fires. Conor explains that the place is now used primarily as a venue for rock and heavy metal concerts, some country and western, and recently some latin and mariachi dances and events. Saltair is owned by a group of investors, and he works for them.
You can’t walk through the building to the lake, but you can go around the outside, and some people park in the big Saltair lot, walk around and go for a swim. We’re talking about all of this, when this customer in the gift shop asks me, “Are you guys from Pittsburgh?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought so. I’m from New Stanton. I drive a truck, and I saw your van outside, And I thought that WQED was just in Pittsburgh, so I went on the internet and looked up WQED, and it was all Pittsburgh, and I thought it was unusual that you were here.” His name is Tom Skelly, and he’s really from Ruffsdale, PA, and he says he’s been out here to Saltair several times before and he likes swimming in the unusual lake. I ask if he’d go for a swim now so we could get shots of somebody in the water, and he says OK.
When I get around the Saltair building, I’m amazed at how far out you have to walk to get to the water. Maybe a third of a mile or so. I feel bad and tell Tom he doesn’t have to go all that way out just for us. At this point in the day, it would be too far to lug all our gear out there. He says he’s suited up, so he’s going in anyway. We say goodbye but watch him walk. Bob uses the camera’s extender to zoom in as far as he can, but Tom ends up being just a dot in the distance as he reaches the water’s edge.
We have to get back on the road. It’s after 4, and we haven’t had lunch yet.