Construction
Saltair’s construction began January 1893 and ended just in time for the summer season. Driving the pilings into the lake bottom was the first challenge to building the resort. The first layer of the lake bottom consisted of loose sand, roughly twelve inches deep. In order to drive the pilings into next layer of dense sodium sulphate, engineers forced steam through pipes to temporarily dissolve the lake bottom where the posts would be placed. After a few hours, the sodium hardened around the posts, locking them into place.
Three hundred tons of steel girders supported a large shallow dome which was roughly the same size as the Salt Lake City Tabernacle. All structures were built directly over the lake’s surface, supported by 2,500 piles driven 14 feet into the lake bottom. The top of the main tower stood 130 feet above the water’s surface. The pavilion was 1200 feet long and 355 feet at its widest point, leading an assessor in 1915 to conclude that the pavilion was “the area of about four city blocks of New York or Chicago.”
