Fremont Island, Great Salt Lake

The Great Salt Lake's third largest island at 14 square miles. The islands first known name was "Disappointment Island" because it wasn't the paradise explorer John C. Fremont had hoped to find. On that same visit in 1843, Kit Carson carved a cross into the rock on the summit which can still be seen today. In the 1850's a Salt Lake City grave digger was banished to the island for stealing clothes and jewelry from bodies he buried. Authorities checked on Jean Baptiste six weeks after his banishment and discovered he had disappeared. Occasionally people claim to see his ghost walking the lake's shores. In the 1880s a judge and his family moved to the island because the air there might be better for his tuberculosis. They stayed until he died in 1891. His wife, who died in 1942, was buried alongside him and their graves can also still be seen there today. The island is privately owned and leased to an outfit who a few years ago tried to open a private game preserve on the island so hunters could have a shot at Russian wild boar and buffalo but I don't believe their operation ever really got off the ground. Today Fremont is just one deserted desert island.