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Great Salt Lake Tooele County

The lake's west shore, where the map keeps changing

Stansbury Island, the quiet side of the Great Salt Lake.

The second-largest island in the Great Salt Lake sits off the wide, empty west shore in Tooele County, reached by a gravel causeway from Interstate 80. On its south end a shoreline trail climbs a bench of an ancient lake. The thing most first-timers get wrong is simple: in dry years it stops being an island at all.

On this page The short answer Getting there The trail A moving shoreline Living near FAQ
By Scott Buehler, Moving Utah Updated August 2026

The short answer

Stansbury Island is a half-day trip to a strange, wide-open corner of the Great Salt Lake most people only ever see as a smudge from the freeway. You drive a gravel causeway off Interstate 80 near Grantsville, and from the south-end trailhead you can hike or ride a single-track path along the shoreline of a lake that dried up thousands of years ago. It is free, remote, and treeless, with no services at all, and it rewards a dry forecast and a full tank. The birding marshes and the Hawaiian pioneer story on the far side of the shore belong to the Skull Valley page; this one stays on the island, the trail, and the moving water.

Where The southern arm of the Great Salt Lake, off the west shore in Tooele County
From Grantsville About 25 minutes: north to Interstate 80, exit 84, then the causeway
Season Best early spring and late fall; hot and shadeless in summer
Cost Free; it is open BLM land with no gate or day-use fee
Time needed A half day for the trailhead and a walk; longer for the full trail or the bike loop

What to know before you go

  • No services of any kind: no fuel, water, shade, or cell signal past the freeway. Grantsville is the last stop for gas and supplies.
  • The road is graded gravel across salt ponds. It is fine for a passenger car in dry weather and can go soft after rain or when the lake is high.
  • The island mixes BLM and private land and is a popular legal target-shooting area, so stay on the marked trail and watch for signs.
  • Go early or late in the day in the warm months. The trail is south-facing, open, and hot, and the brine flies gather along the shore in summer.

Getting there

The causeway across the salt ponds.

Getting to Stansbury Island is half the experience. From Interstate 80 you take the second Grantsville exit, exit 84, about 30 miles west of Salt Lake City. Turn left onto the frontage road, cross the railroad tracks, and the pavement soon gives way to a gravel causeway that runs north across a checkerboard of salt evaporation ponds. It is roughly seven miles of open, treeless flat to the trailhead on the island's south end, with the Stansbury Mountains rising ahead of you and the lake stretching out on both sides.

In dry weather an ordinary car handles the causeway at an easy pace. The surface is graded dirt and gravel, and the low stretches near the ponds are the parts that soften after rain or when the lake sits high against the road, so the weather matters far more than the vehicle. There is no pavement, no fuel, and no cell signal once you leave the freeway, which is exactly why this shore stays so quiet. Fill up in Grantsville, bring more water than you think you need, and let someone know your plan before you drive out.

What you are crossing is a working edge of the lake. The ponds beside the causeway are part of the salt industry that has harvested this shore for generations, and the white ridges you see are drying salt, not snow. It is an unglamorous, oddly beautiful approach, and it sets the tone for an island that trades scenery for space.

The trail

A path along an ancient shoreline.

The draw on the island's south end is a BLM single-track trail, commonly cited at about five miles one way, that traces a bench cut into the mountainside long ago by the shore of ancient Lake Bonneville, the enormous ice-age lake the Great Salt Lake is the shrunken remnant of. After a steep climb at the start it settles into an easygoing amble at a near-constant height, with the whole silver sweep of the lake and its islands opening up below you. Walkers turn around wherever they like; there is no wrong distance to go.

Mountain bikers know the same trailhead for a longer and much harder outing, a loop that adds a punishing climb to the ridge and returns across the flats on dirt roads. It is a genuinely technical ride and a local favorite, and because so much of the route faces south, the snow melts off early and the trail comes into shape while the higher country is still white. That south-facing exposure is also why summer is the wrong season: the path is open, hot, and without a scrap of shade.

The reward is the quiet and the long view. On a clear shoulder-season day you can have miles of shoreline bench to yourself, with Antelope Island across the water and the Oquirrh and Stansbury ranges standing over a lake that looks, from up here, like a sheet of hammered metal.

Shared land, and target shooting. Part of Stansbury Island is BLM public land and part is private, and the two mix along the route, so stay on the marked trail and respect posted boundaries. This is also a popular spot for legal target shooting, so be aware of your surroundings, make your presence known, and wearing blaze orange or another bright color is a sensible habit out here. There is no water, shade, or help nearby, so carry what you need and turn back with margin.

The details

WhereThe south-end trailhead, at the end of the causeway from Interstate 80 exit 84
From GrantsvilleAbout 25 minutes, most of it on gravel
SeasonEarly spring and late fall; snow melts early on the south slope
CostFree; open BLM land
Time neededA couple of hours for a walk; a half day or more for the full trail or the bike loop

A moving shoreline

The island that becomes a peninsula.

The single most interesting thing about Stansbury Island is that the word island comes and goes. The water between it and the mainland is only inches to a few feet deep, so when the lake drops, that gap dries into salt flat and the island quietly joins the shore.

The Great Salt Lake is enormous in area and remarkably shallow, and it has no outlet, so it rises and falls with how much snow and rain the mountains send it. It reached a recorded low in 2022, came back up over the next couple of big snow years, and has kept moving since. What that means on the ground is that the shoreline is never in the same place twice: a spot at the water's edge one year can sit a mile out on dry, cracked salt the next, and the crossing to the island can be firm land or shallow mud depending on the season and the year.

So plan for the lake you find rather than the one on an old map. The comparison below lays out what low water and high water each do to the crossing and the shore, in durable terms that hold whichever way the lake happens to be running when you go.

When the lake is The land bridge The shoreline What it means for a visit
LowThe flats dry out and the island connects to the mainlandSits far out on hard, cracked playaFirm ground and easy access; a longer, more exposed walk to reach standing water
HighShallow water and mud fill the gap againComes back in toward the causewayWetter, softer edges near the road; the island feels more like an island

A thing that really happened

When the state pumped the lake into the desert.

If the low-water lake is the story of the last few years, the opposite crisis is one of the strangest things Utah has ever done. In the mid 1980s the Great Salt Lake rose so high that it began flooding Interstate 80, the railroad grades, the shoreline industry, and even the Salt Lake airport. So the state built the West Desert Pumping Project: a set of giant pumps, put up in under a year, that moved lake water out into a shallow evaporation basin in the desert, where the sun could take it. Over about two years the project pushed nearly a trillion gallons out onto the flats and lowered the lake by roughly a foot and a half.

Be honest about the geography, because it is a lake-wide story rather than a Tooele County one: the pumps and that evaporation basin sit out past the county line on the lake's remote northwest arm, in Box Elder County. But standing on the west shore near Stansbury Island, looking at the same flat, salt-rimmed water, it is the right place to appreciate that people once treated this lake as something to be pumped away by the trillion gallons. The pumps were later mothballed and kept on standby, just in case the water ever climbs like that again.

The working shore

Salt, industry, and sand like pearls.

The west shore is a working industrial edge of the lake, and it is worth seeing plainly rather than pretending it is wilderness. Cargill Salt harvests solar salt near Timpie, at the north end of the shore, where a literal mountain of it rises beside the freeway. A magnesium plant on the lake's Skull Valley shore at Rowley, idled in recent years, sits farther around the same water. These are the ponds and pipelines you drive past on the way out, and they are part of what makes this corner of Utah look like nowhere else.

The other small wonder is underfoot. The pale beaches here are made of oolitic sand, tiny round grains that form in the salty water in thin layers around a speck of a nucleus, growing a little like pearls. The Utah Geological Survey lists Stansbury Island as one of the places to see and collect it, and up close it reads less like crushed rock than a scatter of miniature beads. The bird marshes, the springs, and the Hawaiian pioneer town of Iosepa on the valley side of this same shore are their own story, told on the Skull Valley page.

Living near Stansbury Island

Nobody lives on the island, but the valley behind it does.

Stansbury Island itself is empty BLM and private range with no town on it. What it offers a resident of Tooele Valley is a strange, close-to-home half-day trip on the edge of the county, not a neighborhood. The places people actually live are back off the freeway.

The closest town

Grantsville is the nearest community and the natural staging point: the last fuel and groceries before the causeway, and about 25 minutes from the trailhead by way of Interstate 80.

The county seat

Tooele, a little farther south, is the valley's largest town and its service center, and it puts the west shore within an easy weekend-morning reach for anyone based there.

The front door

Lake Point, where State Route 36 meets Interstate 80, is the closest community to the exit and the county's quickest jump onto the freeway that carries you out to the island.

If a home base in this part of Utah is what you are weighing, start with the towns of Tooele Valley. The Grantsville guide covers the closest community to the causeway, the Tooele guide covers the county seat and its services, and the Lake Point guide covers the fast-growing front door at the freeway. Each lays out what a move there actually involves.

Keep reading

More of the county's wide open west.

The orientation

Tooele County, how it fits together

Three habitable valleys and then the west desert, and the towns and topics that anchor them.

Read the guide

The white plain

The Bonneville Salt Flats

The hard white lakebed west of here where people have chased land-speed records for a century, and how to visit it safely.

Read the guide

The valley beside it

Skull Valley

Iosepa, the bird springs, and the old Lincoln Highway, on the valley side of the same salt shore.

Read the guide

The lakeside community

Stansbury Park

A 1970s planned community with a man-made lake, an 1854 gristmill, and one of the biggest amateur telescopes anywhere.

Read the guide

The empty quarter

The Pony Express Trail

The drivable 1860 mail route across the west desert, a restored relay station, and a famous wild-horse herd.

Read the guide

The city guide

Grantsville homes and neighborhoods

Prices, neighborhoods, schools, and current listings for the closest town to the west shore.

Open the city guide

Quick answers

Stansbury Island, answered.

Stansbury Island sits in the southern arm of the Great Salt Lake, off the lake's west shore in Tooele County, about 30 miles west of Salt Lake City. From Interstate 80 take the second Grantsville exit, exit 84, turn left onto the frontage road, cross the railroad tracks, and follow the gravel causeway north across the salt evaporation ponds for roughly seven miles to the trailhead on the island's south end.

Not always. It is the second-largest island in the Great Salt Lake, but the water between the island and the mainland is shallow, and when the lake is low the salt flats there dry out and connect the island to land. In those years you can drive and walk to it on dry ground, and it is an island in name more than in fact. When the lake is high the gap fills with shallow water and mud again.

The BLM keeps a single-track trail on the island's south end, commonly cited at about five miles one way, that runs along a bench of the ancient Lake Bonneville shoreline. After a steep initial climb it settles into an easy amble with wide views over the lake. Mountain bikers ride a longer, harder loop off the same trailhead, with a brutal climb to the ridge and a return across the flats.

In dry weather most passenger cars manage the gravel causeway to the trailhead, taken slowly. The surface is graded dirt and gravel with no pavement, and rain or a high lake can leave the low stretches soft or muddy. There is no fuel, water, or cell signal once you leave the freeway, so fill the tank in Grantsville and go on a dry, settled forecast.

The main things to know are practical. Part of the island is BLM land and part is private, the two mix along the trail, and the area is a popular legal target-shooting spot, so stay on the marked trail, watch for signs, and wearing blaze orange is a sensible habit. There is no water, shade, or services out here, so bring your own and tell someone your plan before a long day.

Early spring and late fall are the sweet spots. Most of the trail faces south, so the snow melts off early and the shoulder seasons stay walkable while the valley is still cool. Summer is hot and exposed with no shade, and the brine flies gather along the shore in the warm months. Winter can be fine on a dry, calm day but the causeway is more likely to be soft.

The lake is broad and very shallow, with no outlet, so it rises and falls with how much snow and rain the region gets. It hit a recorded low in 2022, came back up after two big snow years, and keeps moving, so the distance from any given spot to the water can change a lot from one year to the next. That is why the shore you photograph one season may sit on a dry salt flat the next.

Yes. In the mid 1980s the lake flooded so high that it threatened Interstate 80, the railroads, and the shoreline industry, so the state built the West Desert Pumping Project: giant pumps that moved lake water out into a shallow evaporation basin in the desert and lowered the lake by roughly a foot and a half. The pumps and that basin sit out past the county line on the lake's remote northwest arm, in Box Elder County, and were later kept on standby.

The pale beaches here are made of oolitic sand, tiny round grains that grow in the salty water in layers around a nucleus, a little like pearls. The Utah Geological Survey lists Stansbury Island as one of the places to see and collect it. Up close the sand looks less like crushed rock and more like a scatter of miniature beads, which is one of the quiet surprises of the west shore.

Scott Buehler, Moving Utah

A strange shore worth the drive, and a valley worth a longer look.

A trip out to the island tells you what the causeway and the trail are like. What it leaves open is whether Tooele Valley fits a household: what a home in Grantsville or Tooele runs, how the commute to Salt Lake feels in a January storm, and which side of the valley sits out of the wind. Tell me what you are weighing and I will introduce you to a Tooele County partner agent who knows this ground, and stay on the file for the research and the financing side.

Talk to Scott The Grantsville city guide

Referral disclosure. Outside Southern Utah, I connect home sellers and buyers with partner agents I trust in their area. If you choose to work with an agent I refer, that agent's brokerage pays my brokerage (Real Broker, LLC) a referral fee. The fee comes out of the agent's compensation; it is not an added cost to you. You are always free to choose any agent you wish, and using a referred agent is never required.