After you've parked at the Buffalo Point Overlook climb carefully over to the north-rim edge unto a ledge you will see there. This is one of the few accessible places tosee Tufa deposits up close. 

Tufa deposits are gravel and sand conglomerate rocks that have been cemented together by carbonate deposition underwater. You might also want to look at the following photos of Tufa Tower deposits around Mono Lake California--see some of these other photo links as well.  Unfortunately some of the better tufa sites around the Great Salt Lake are not easily accessed. Here are some photos of a Tufa Tower found on Promontory Point to the north.

Overview of Ecological Change

After you've looked close-up at the tufa step back and take a broader view of the landscape.  Gaze out over grasslands and sagebrush from the Buffalo Point Overlook to Bridger Bay and Egg Island Point and even farther to the northeast to the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in northern Utah, Box-Elder County - see also Northern Utah Wildlife, Utah.com, or the USFWS site.

How much change can you observe on the landscape?

Ancient Lake Shorelines

Each time that Lake Bonneville rose and fell changes occurred on the landscape and in its ecosystems and climate: the expansion and contraction of marshes and beach areas, populations of native peoples, animals, and plants.  Fluctuations in the lake  even produced changes in the shape of the land itself--its landforms. 

Have you noticed the benches along the mountains, as locals call them?  These ancient shorelines or stands are some of the most visible landscape traces in the region. Look at the photos below of  benches on Antelope and Fremont Island as well as near Brigham City.

Benches or lake stands near Brigham City.

Fremont Island, as seen from the mainland.

Lake-levels on Antelope Island as seen from Buffalo Point. Stringham Peak is in the background.

Strand lines left by seasonal and annual fluctuations of the lake today.

  Human Traces on the Landscape

Long before the arrival of the white man the various lakeshore habitats  were frequented and exploited by Early Man. These peoples belonged to various cultures known as: Paleo-Indians or Big Game Hunters, Archaic, Formative-Stage Sevier Culture, and most recently, the Proto-Shoshoni. 

Archeological research keeps pushing back the date of man's arrival in the Basin, but the most widely accepted evidence dates the first human presence near the lake at about 10,000 years ago. But even early Pleistocene big game hunters in search of mammoth and later arriving nomadic small-game and plant-gatherers, left their imprint on the landscape. 

Note some of the petroglyphs on Stansbury Island pictured below:

Human populations have waxed and waned in size in relation to changing climatic and ecosystem conditions from the late Pleistocene period to the arrival of the Mountain Men such as Jim Bridger. The earliest people lived primarily by hunting large animals such as the mammoth, and by gathering the edible plans that grew in the marshes around the lake.

After the great Bonneville Flood and the dramatic shrinking of ancient Lake Bonneville at the end of the Ice Age (see also the graph of lake stands) there was a gradual shift to a warmer, drier climate which led to the lake becoming more saline. Humans came to depend more on small game, waterfowl, and the plant resources of the much expanded fresh and salt-water marshes, lower-stream deltas of the major streams entering the lake and upland woodland and forested areas. 

Various plant and animal resources were exploited for food including some of the following resources found on or near the lakeshore: 

Iodine bush seeds (Allenrolfea)

Alkali bulrush

Greasewood

Pickleweed

These early hunter-gatherer culture groups would extract and gather resources from a wide diversity of zones at different times of the year in a predictable subsistence cycle. The zones included:

• uplands
• lake shore
• sage-scrub lands
• grasslands - steppe
• spring and stream edges
• salt flats 
• freshwater marshes
• saltwater marshes 
• mud flats


The Little & Big Cottonwood Virtual Trip (see Save Our Canyons) will show you the higher altitude zones where you can observe such habitats as aspen and/or mixed coniferous forest, oak brushlands, alpine meadows, valley-bottom riparian cottonwood forests and so on. Here are some photos of the most typical lakeshore habitats:

Freshwater marsh

Salt pan (Playa) and saltwater marsh zone

Mudflats

Sage-scrub near Dugway Proving ground.

Pinyon-Juniper forest in hills north of Promontory Point

The famous Bonneville Salt Flats at sunset

Arrival of the White Man

The most significant environmental and landscape changes came about since the arrival of white man to the region . Much of the vegetation you see from Buffalo Point, for instance, reflects a century or more of grazing and fire-regime controls. That history, of course, displaced most of the native wildlife that were formerly in abundance. 



For more on fire ecology in the Intermountain West see some of the excellent research on the history of fire in Yellowstone Park from about 1690 up to 1990. That history is similar to what happened on Antelope Island. You can find other resources on the Yellowstone/Rocky Mountain region here.

Visit the remains of a ranch built by Fielding Garr on Antelope Island.  It is being restored and preserved as a historic site. You can see in the foreground some of the native bunch grasses returning after keeping off the cattle for a few years.  In the background are the Oquirrh Mountains.  The event shown here is a rendevous--a reenactment of a former mountain man trade show and fair.

Rangeland Change  on Antelope Island

To the more observant student of the landscape one of the greatest changes that has occurred is the introduction of exotic grasses for grazing of domesticated cattle--see photo at left. Cattle on the open range in Skull Valley, west of the Oquirrh Mountains.  Notice much of the introduced "cheat" grass that is common in the region.

Since Antelope Island became a state park, it is returning slowly to a more natural state at least in the southern wild part of the island. If you have time, and the right type of vehicle or a mountain-bike, take a side-trip beyond the Buffalo Pens and Fence on quiet dirt-tracks to the southern part of the island to see the Bison and Antelope that are now running free. Bison were returned to the island in the late 1800s.

Modern Land Use Conflicts

Unfortunately, Antelope Island, even as a park and wildlife preserve is not free of human impact and controversy today. Recently Antelope Island has become the focus of a major land use controversy regarding plans to build a causeway direct from Salt Lake City across the Jordan River delta and through the wetlands near the International Airport to the southern tip of the island. The goal of this  project would be to increase tourist access to the wild southern half of Antelope Island--therein lies the debate and critical question: What is the best way to manage and use wilderness? 
 

Here is a view of the southern end of Antelope Island as seen across exposed mudflats from Interstate-80 near Saltair.  See the overall GUIDEMAP of this module or the Magna topographic map or the Salt Lake Basin overview map to orient yourself.

From Antelope Island (see State Parks page) find descriptions of adventure tours and excursions for birding, hiking, mountain-biking and other backcountry-type activities on the island. There are many quiet beaches and side-canyons and mudflats on the island where the former ecosystems are being restored.

• See this ANTELOPE ISLAND MAP which you can purchase from  the UGS (Utah Geological Survey) DNR Bookstore and Map source - State of Utah or the Antelope Island Visitor Center - see other sites here.
  
• Get the Booklet: Geology & Antelope Island State Park, Utah, 1988. Other maps are listed in the Great Salt Lake Map Exercise. UGS (Utah Geological Survey) - Great Salt Lake Resources & Questions along with Publications. 
  
• Learn more from Ty Harrison, Professor of Biology, Westminster College of SLC. and the Great Salt Lake Project and other modules such as the Great Salt Lake Playa Foodweb Project. 

• More at: SELECT SOURCES, Northern Utah Wildlife, Utah.com, USFWS and learn about the modern land use conflicts from this document: Antelope Island Draft Access Management Plan - 2004 (PDF)