The abandoned Saltair Pavillion

THERE IS A FASCINATING BACK-STORY TO THIS!!!!

When I read that the creator of this film was inspired to come up with the story after seeing the old pavillion on a trip the Great Salt Lake, I decided to do some research and really got drawn into it.

It's the old Saltair II you see in the film. It's referred to as Saltair II because it's a replacement for the original Saltair that burned in 1925. And what a history it has. I got so curious after seeing the film that I spent weeks hunting down information and photographs. And there you get what almost amounts to a real horror story.

You could say - if you believed in such things - that the place is cursed.

SALTAIR I (1893-1925)

The first Saltair was a palace. It was magnificent. It opened in 1893 way ahead of it's time, with a high tech "Edison" device to produce electricity. In 1893, electric lights were a very big deal. So were the rides, which were rare outside of World Fairs and Coney Island. In fact, the roller coaster had been invented less than a decade before. And the first ferris wheel was built the same year the pavillion opened, 1893.

Saltair I had everything, more than you could possibly imagine. And it was successful beyond anything anyone's dreams. On opening day, Memorial Day of 1893, it attracted 10,000 people, which is amazing out there in that desert. The lake, of course, was a draw as well because the water is so dense with salt that you can't sink.

And Saltair I kept getting more popular. The Wright Brothers went there in 1911 (and possibly before) to demonstrate their new "flying machine" and an airstrip was built just for that. It was visited by public figures on a regular basis, including president William Howard Taft who is shown at Saltair in a picture dated September of 1909.

And just when the glamorous resort was at it's peak, it all disappeared, destroyed by fire on the 22nd of April 1925.

SALTAIR II

Immediately, plans were underway to rebuild. I actually have the blueprints for the Saltair II shown in the film. Whether they're the final ones or not, I don't know. They're dated 1926.

Rome wasn't built in a day and neither was Saltair. So the second amusement park wasn't ready for opening day until 1931. And it never truly succeeded.

Between 1925 and 1931 many things had changed. The novelty of the rides wore off. The stock market crash of 1929 had sent the country into economic misery. Movies had gone from flickering silents to real Hollywood productions. The "movie palace," the large, ornate movie theaters that grew up during the 1920s, supplied some of the same luxury people went to Saltair to experience. Radio had taken hold and provided low cost entertainment. The market just wasn't there. You could say that the place was doomed from the start. And six years is a long time in the public attention span. The public was accustomed to the idea of "No Saltair."

The "new" Saltair struggled along and survived the 1930s. It apparently closed to the public during the World War II years, then reopened. But visitors continued to drift away. Photos of the place in the mid 1950s are really pathetic. There's nobody there. What you see is a big empty place with a couple of people in the whole wide-angle shot on what's obviously a lovely summer day. The signs of neglect are brutally apparent in the outbuildings surrounding the pavillion.

The pavillion finally closed in 1958 and sat there rotting for the next twelve years. It burned in November of 1970 (eight years after this film) in an arson fire set on the ballroom floor. Some old raw footage of the fire is available on YouTube.

SALTAIR III

Then somebody had the bright idea of building another Saltair. Yes, Saltair III. And the story doesn't get more bizarre than this.

Water levels at the lake had been going down for years so the size of it shrunk. The new Saltair, Saltair III, was not built on exactly the same spot where Saltair I and II had been located. It was located about 1.8 miles south-southwest, closer to the Salt Lake Marina. And more importantly, it was built to be close to the shrunken Salt Lake shoreline.

The third Saltair was finished and opened in 1981. It's architectural design looked a lot like the others, but greatly scaled down and more modern. There were the usual rides and stands and amusement park stuff.

But ... (and this is where the curse thing gets real) ... just months after it opened, the levels in the Salt Lake rose back to normal and the place was flooded. It sat in that briny water like a rock for about ten years. Yes, there's video of that on YouTube, as well.

Needless to say Saltair III was ruined. Still, in 1993, twelve years after it opened and was flooded, it was partially restored and used as a concert venue.

If you research the place now, people describe it as creepy, eerie, very unsettling or even frightening. It's a weatherbeaten hulk with occasional unfixed broken windows that sits on a vast, empty parking lot with a paper sign (no kidding, a cardboard poster) in front of it. You can rent it for parties and there are some minor concerts ("raves") there from time to time. Unless you're into that stuff, it's safe to say you've never heard of any of the acts.

And these days Saltair is on the news only when a dead body is found out there. The skeletal remains of a teen were discovered in 2000. A few years later, there was a body in a burning car, which was closer to the location of the old Saltair than the new. And more recently a young man drowned in water just across the highway from Saltair III.

IF NOT A CURSE, INCREDIBLE BAD LUCK

So the first Saltair lasted an exuberant 32 years, then went up in smoke. The second was not as lavishly built but still impressive. But it opened to massive disinterest and a dreadful economy. And the third.... well, you could say it drowned in it's infancy and it's just sitting there, like the heroin in Carnival of Souls, waiting for the graveyard to catch up.

And isn't that ironic?