Do you know about Black Rock’s Fourth of July celebrations?

Salt Lake City, Utah – Three cannon bursts awakened the citizens of Salt Lake on July 4, 1851, just as they were preparing for an hours-long march to a holiday celebration.

The four-hour journey to Black Rock in the Great Salt Lake, planned by Utahns, would not be silent.
Back then, brass bands were quite popular in Utah. The Nauvoo Brass Band led the procession through the dusty terrain by playing patriotic music.

Black Rock held a particular allure for Utah’s pioneers, who erected houses close to it. At about 2:00 p.m., 130 carriages that were part of the pioneer celebration arrived at the lake.

The marchers set up a huge banner when they got there and started to climb the rock. For many years, there was a flag pole atop Black Rock, and it would stay there for many more years as Black Rock developed into a popular place for July 4th celebrations.

For the Fourth of July, the Utah and Nevada Railway began operating special trains to Black Rock by 1881, and those trains continued into midnight.

Since Black Rock was encircled by water by the 1880s, special “bathing trains” were all the rage. They even held races that went all the way from Black Rock to Antelope Island, where in 1937 Orson Spencer broke the record.

There were fireworks fired off Black Rock, free lunches and beer gardens, and dancing all night long during the enormous celebrations of the 1930s.

The resort held out until the 1960s when the Fourth of July celebration started to overtake it. Today, the parade just serves as a reminder of the location where countless numbers of people celebrated the holiday for almost a century.