There’s a city on the shore of a salty lake. Thanks for reading. Just kidding.
Salt Lake City was founded long before Utah became an American territory. It’s most well known for being the beating heart of the Mormon church with two conjoined city blocks dedicated to its temples and offices. Many of the museums in the city, such as the Pioneer Memorial Museum, are free.
When they’re not undergoing restoration, all of the buildings in Temple Square can be visited. I got the hear an organ recital in the 1840s Tabernacle, which doesn’t happen very often. The Salt Lake Temple was having its foundations restored so there wasn’t much of that building to see. When it’s finally all fixed up, head up to the ninth floor of the adjacent hotel to get a really good top-down view of it.
The Beehive House at the end of the block was Brigham Young’s office and home. It’s been restored in the 1960s to look as it did in 1888. Tours are available every half hour to see the interior of the house. It was built with Adobe bricks and soft yellow pine before being plastered and painted to look like a normal house.
The Great Salt Lake is one of the saltiest bodies of water in the world with up to 30% salinity depending on the season. It is the largest remnant of the ancient Lake Bonneville and the biggest lake west of the Mississippi. It smells salty, tastes salty, but unlike a sea, it has no gulls.
