Storm Unearths Wreck of Century-Old Boat in Utah’s Great Salt Lake

The vessel may belong to a fleet used to construct and maintain a railroad causeway that crosses the briny body of water

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Last weekend, a storm struck Utah’s Great Salt Lake with winds exceeding 50 miles per hour, exposing the rusted wreckage of what may be a century-old boat, reports Spencer Burt for local broadcast station Fox 13.

Great Salt Lake State Park posted a photo of the wreck on its social media pages, stating that the steel boat—now visible along the body of water’s south shore—likely dates to the turn of the 20th century. The park also noted that people have boated on the lake since the mid-1880s.

Park manager Dave Shearer tells Nate Carlisle of the Salt Lake Tribune that the storm’s strong winds drove waves to the south of the lake’s shores, washing away sands that had previously covered the wreckage.

The lake’s decreasing water levels also helped uncover what remains of the boat’s corroded hull, writes Erin Cox in a separate Fox 13 story. This decline, long thought to be the product of climate change, actually stems from the diversion of freshwater streams feeding the lake for consumption as drinking water to the tune of around 870 billion gallons each year, reported Sarah Derouin for Science magazine in 2017.

As Shearer tells the Salt Lake Tribune, the vessel is a steel hold boat with wooden planking. It may have been part of a fleet used by the Southern Pacific Railroad to construct or maintain a causeway across the lake in the early 1900s.

“It looks like this is about a 30- to 40-foot-long boat, which matches the description of the boats the Southern Pacific was using,” says Shearer.