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Show THE HISTORY BLAZER ATEM'S OF UTAH'S PAST FROM THE Utah State Historical Society 300 Rio Grande Salt Lake City. lTT 84101 ( 801) 533- 3500 FAX ( 801) 533- 3303 An Ideal Place to Learn to Swim ALTHOUGHT HE GREATS ALTL AKEI S UTAH'SL ARGEST BODY OF WATER, there are few Utahns who learn to swim in its salty waters. Nevertheless, an early visitor to the lake, the Swiss-born Heinrich Leinhard, wrote an enthusiastic account in his diary entry for August 9, 1846, about the ease with which one wuld learn to swim in the lake. Leinhard, en route with a wagon train to California, had just come through Weber Canyon and was circling around the south edge of the Great Salt Lake along the Hastings Cutoff. He and two companions were ahead of the wagon train and decided to go for a swim. His account is the first known written description of swimming in the Great Salt Lake. He wrote: ' The morning was so delightfully warm and the absolutely clear water so inviting that we soon resolved to take a salt water bath. The beach glistened with the whitish- gray sand which covered it, and on the shore we wuld see the still- fresh tracks of a bear, notwithstand-ing which we soon had undressed and were going down into the salty water. We had, however, to go out not less than a half mile before the water reached our hips. Even here it was still so transparent that we wuld see the bottom as if there were no water whatever above it, yet so heavy that we could hardly tread upon the bottom with our feet; it was here quite a trick to stand even on tiptoe. " IRinhard went on to note that although he was a poor swimmer anywhere else, in the waters of the Great Salt Lake he became "... an absolutely first- rate swimmer [ for] I could assume every conceivable position, without the least danger. I could in a sitting position swim on my side, swim on my back .... For learning to swim, no water in the whole world is so well adapted as the Salt Lake. " Despite enthusiasm for his newly discovered swimming ability and the lake that had made the discovery possible, Leinhard concluded with a note of caution: " Only a single feature had the swimming in this lake that was not conducive to pleasure; this consisted in the fact that when one got a little water in one's eye, it occasioned a severe burning pain; and after we reached the shore and dressed ourselves without first washing in unsalted water, being desirous of hastening on, we soon experienced an almost unbearable smarting or itching over the whole body where the salt water had fded up all the crevices of the skin with an all- enveloping deposit of salt." A hundred and fifty years after kinhard penned the account of his Great Salt Lake swimming experience in his diary, would- be swimmers in the lake are still cautioned to keep the ( more) water out of their eyes and wash off thoroughly with fresh water after their swim. But perhaps this is a small price to pay to become an instant swimmer. See excerpts hm Heinrich Leiribad's Diary published in W&@ m FOH Bridger, Utah Historical Q- erly 19 ( 1957). THE HISTORY BLAZER is produced by the Utah State Historical Society and filnded in part by a grant from the Utah Statehood Centennial Commission. For more information about the Historical Society telephone 533- 3500. 951010 ( KP) |
