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Editor's note: This article is published through the Great Salt Lake Collaborative, a solutions journalism initiative that partners news, education and media organizations to help inform people about the plight of the Great Salt Lake.
SYRACUSE — Antelope Island remains one of Utah's most-visited state parks, and state officials are hoping to turn its popularity into a learning opportunity while adding more to the visitor experience.
Utah Division of State Parks officials broke ground on a massive expansion of the existing 5,600-square-foot visitor during a ceremony on Tuesday. The expansion will bring more restrooms, office space and educational and interpretive displays to the park. Its gift shop will be expanded and a new catering kitchen will be constructed so the venue can host events.
The facility, set to be expanded to 27,000 square feet, will feature a new 200-person conference room with a large-format theater that will play a new nature documentary called "Secrets of Great Salt Lake," as well. The existing visitor center will also be renovated to become a new learning center for K-12 students and universities.
"This is really, really cool," said Antelope Island State Park manager Wendy Wilson. "This new learning and visitor center is going to be incredible."
The existing visitor center was constructed in 1996, but Wilson said it became outdated and overcrowded as the park soared in popularity. Antelope Island has always been one of the state's most-visited parks, likely because of its proximity to the Wasatch Front.
The park attracted over 265,000 visitors during the 2003 fiscal year, making it the fourth most popular state park that year — the first year that Utah State Parks published visitation data. Many of these visits were K-12 students who came to the park on field trips to learn about wildlife, nature and history.
It was still Utah's fourth most-visited state park during the 2023 calendar year, but visitation reached a little more than 935,000 last year — an increase of nearly 250% over the past two decades. In fact, visitation grew so quickly, park officials had to change field trip experiences because it had become impossible to run the park and have one-on-one learning opportunities for students.
"We had to stop that because our visitation grew so high that we couldn't host schools and our general visitors in the same building," Wilson said. "Thay was a real bummer."
The expansion, she said, will allow park staff to bring back those educational opportunities while general visitors will also have more space to learn about the park.
Utah State Parks Director Scott Strong said the learning center will also help university researchers study the Great Salt Lake, which reached an all-time low in 2022.
"It's going to be an incredible place for learning," he said.
Park officials unveiled plans for a $12 million renovation and expansion project two years ago after it had secured funding from the Utah Legislature. Officials said they then received a $2.2 million donation from the Larry H. and Gail Miller Family Foundation for water conservation and educational outreach efforts after the Great Salt Lake plummeted to a new all-time low.
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox also revealed, later in 2022, Utah would produce a Great Salt Lake-themed nature documentary to play exclusively at the park. The goal, he said, would be to make a film with stunning visuals akin to the 2022 documentary "Wings Over Water."
"We want people to fall in love with the lake again, the way people have fallen in love with Zion National Park and Arches National Park," he said at the time.
The new center is expected to be open by July 2025. Park officials say they hope the new center will also help visitors fall in love with Antelope Island and the Great Salt Lake.
Wilson explained that the building was specifically designed to open up panoramic views of the island, Great Salt Lake and Wasatch Mountains.
"It's going to be a beautiful building," she said. "You come into the visitor and learning center and then you see out and then you go out and you experience the island yourself."
