SALT OF THE EARTH: How two ancient seabeds can provide a wealth of wellbeing.

• Author: Griffin, Elle

I've always thought that because of my Norwegian heritage, my body has an affinity for the sea. Living in California, I was always close to my source, and my body never experienced a single symptom. But once 1 moved to a landlocked state, my body seemed to crave the salinity so available to my ancestors.

* This may be a mythology of my own making but it's one I A have relied on throughout my life. Whenever I swim in a warm ocean, my body feels healed--as though I've been dipped in the waters of the River Styx. My aches and pains are long gone, my mind is clear, and I feel as though I can float.

* When I've gone too long without the sea, I often have to replicate its effects. When my muscles ache, I soak them in a bath of Epsom salts.

When my hips tighten up, I rub them with magnesium lotions. When I suffer from migraine headaches, I use a Neti pot to soothe my sinuses. Even my larger ailments have been healed with a dash of salt.

* I once developed the underpinnings of hypothyroidism--and healed them by adding trace minerals to my water. When a bone in my left foot became fractured at the same time that my teeth began to show signs of gum disease, I took calcium and magnesium supplements and ate phosphorus-rich foods to bring my bone density back into balance.

* Eventually, after paying $79 to soak in a float tank filled with 2,000 pounds of Epsom salts in an effort to soothe my aching muscles and joints, I came to a revelation: My body is made for the sea, and I live in a state that contains one.

HEALING WATERS

I have lived in Salt Lake City for four years, and yet--until I wrote this article--I never swam in the Great Salt Lake. Everyone told me not to. The mosquitoes, they wax. The smell, they wane. But apart from a camping trip to Antelope Island during which I was neither accosted by mosquitoes nor assaulted by an odor, I never really tested the waters on my own.

But I wanted to. On the wall of my office is a picture dated 1900. In it, some 50-60 people bob next to a buoy that reads "try to sink." They're wearing old fashioned swimsuits and bathing caps and the first iteration of the Saltair looms behind them, the very portrait of an exultant summer getaway. It was a swimming destination then. Why isn't it now?

Dr. Jeff Nichols is a professor of history at Westminster College, and he's just as nostalgic for the way the lake once was. "The train would take you right out onto the pier. It was exciting!" he tells me. "On a beautiful summer day, you go out there and you're in the middle of the lake, far from the shore ... Saltair had bathhouses, a big dance floor--the biggest in the world, they claimed. They had amusement park rides, they had bullfights, they had pilots fly over the lake. They even had a saloon and sold beer."

Before automobiles became de rigeur, a steamboat took city dwellers to the eastern shore for a variety of recreational activities. There John W. Young--a son of Brigham Young--built Lake Side Resort in 1870. Eventually, the train wrapped all the way around the south shore, where the larger Lake Point Resort featured a 40-room hotel and sandy beaches. Black Rock Resort also made an entrance, as did...