A shipwreck has been discovered in the Great Salt Lake of Utah, which is thought to be around 120 years old. The old steel boat could...
A shipwreck has been discovered in the Great Salt Lake of Utah, which is thought to be around 120 years old.
The old steel boat could be seen protruding out of the water after a recent storm that passed through the area.
There has been boating on the lake since the 1880s and this particular wreck is believed to date from around the 1900s, according to the State Park and Marina which posted about the exciting find on social media.
A storm that passed through the Great Salt Lake unearthed a piece of Utah history. A steel boat likely dating back to the turn of the 20th Century was spotted
'Great Salt Lake Storms can be ominous but also fascinating,' the park explained in a Facebook post.
'Some of these boats experienced tragic endings only to be buried in the sand by storms but storms can also uncover them as the most recent one did by the Great Salt Lake Marina.'
'It is most likely a working boat, which puts it as a possibility that it was a working boat from the railroad fleet,' Dave Shearer the Great Salt Lake Park Manager told ABC4.
Still, more questions than answers remain.
Boating on the Great Salt Lake dates back to the mid-1880s but some boats sank and were buried in the sand by storms but new storms can help uncover them
'What was that boat used for? Who were the people on the boat? What were they doing and what was it doing on the south shore of the Great Salt Lake?' Shearer asked. 'What was it's final demise?'
The Southern Pacific Railroad brought the boats onto the lake to maintain the trestle and causeway until 1902 and it is possible that the boat belonged to them.
'They were taking a lot of logs up to the railroad causeway, or to the railroad,' Shearer said to Fox13. 'At the same time, they were taking stuff from the railroad back to the mining camps.'
Close up photos show how the boat's wooden deck has been corroded by the salt in the lake after being submerged for more than a century.
Great Salt Lake State Park officials posted about the unique find on social media
'It looks like this is about a 30- to 40-foot-long boat,' Shearer said, 'which matches the description of the boats the Southern Pacific was using.'
The Great Salt Lake is the eighth largest terminal lake in the world. Terminal means there is no outlet so the water gets salty.
The storm which laid the shipwreck bare happened last Friday when winds reached at least 55 mph at Salt Lake City International Airport, according to the National Weather Service.
It's thought that heavy winds managed to nudge the sunken vessel free allowing park officials and visitors a glimpse of the past.
In March, the wrecks of two wooden boats, one of which may be more than 100 years old, were been uncovered on a beach in northern Florida
A couple of other shipwrecks have also been discovered recently.
Two wooden boats, thought to be 100 years old were found washed up on a beach northern Florida beach in March.
The Great Lakes are also riddled with mysterious shipwrecks
In Lake Michigan a boat was shown 'disappearing' into the lake, while another schooner wreck was found almost intact after sinking in 1891, according to Fox News.
The wreckage was found just off the Muskegon coast after a storm last December.
And two other schooners, from the Civil War more than 140 years ago, were discovered near Beaver Island in the lake.
The wrecks were found at jetties in Mayport, near Jacksonville, Florida
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