Perhaps you have heard of Salt Lake. It’s a small community on the island of Oahu, overlooking downtown Honolulu. It even has its own freeway exit.
Really.
But this webpage is about the other community known as Salt Lake. That is, Salt Lake City, Utah.
At first it was called Great Salt Lake City. Great officially disappeared from the name in 1868. This was not to suggest that the city lacked greatness, but rather to make the name less of a mouthful.
Salt Lake City takes its name from the nearby Great Salt Lake, so named because it’s a “great” big lake and, well, salty. So salty that only brine shrimp, brine flies, algae, and bacteria can live in it. You can sail the Great Salt Lake secure in the knowledge that no sea monsters lurk beneath. (Tip for newcomers: If your friends tell you to bring fishing gear, they’re messing with you.)
Whether explorer Jim Bridger or trapper Étienne Provost was the first person to lay eyes on the Great Salt Lake is a matter of debate. It’s also a trick question. Native Americans arrived there long before anyone of Northern European descent.
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Just about anyone who took American History in school knows that members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints trekked to Utah in 1847. What is lesser known is that Utah Territory belonged to Mexico at the time. Its borders took in what today’s maps identify as Utah, most of Nevada, a good chunk of western Colorado, and a smidgeon of Wyoming. Under the Treaty of Hidalgo at the close of the Mexican-American War, Mexico ceded Utah territory to the United States seven months after the pioneers’ arrival.
Salt Lake City is but wasn’t always Utah’s capitol city. The honor of “Utah’s first capitol” goes to the town of Fillmore, named for President Millard Fillmore, who in 1850 appointed Brigham Young the territory’s first governor. Alas, the 140-mile commute from Salt Lake City utlimately proved too burdensome for the travel-weary territorial legislature, which managed to convene there only once. The capitol moved to Salt Lake City in 1856.
Today, with a population of about 1.192 million, the Salt Lake City metropolitan area is large enough to offer big-city amenities, yet small enough to preserve an intimate community feel. It is home to the Utah Jazz, Utah Symphony, Ballet West, and the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square, all word-renowned in their own right. It’s home to the University of Utah and Westminster College. And it’s home to about every kind of outdoor activity you can name—downhill and cross-country skiing, hiking, camping, boating, fishing, rock climbing, hunting, river rafting, and more.
The Salt Lake metropolitan area is an excellent place to own a water softener, for two reasons:
(1) Salt Lake area water is hard, hard, hard. That’s not a good thing. Hard water is murder on pipes and appliances, especially water heaters, which aren’t cheap to replace. It leaves hard-to-remove gunk on dishes, not to mention on shower walls and tubs. And after a shower or bath, it can leave your skin feeling yucky.
(2) Water softeners need salt. (Kinetico water softeners need about two-thirds less of it than other brands—more on that in a moment.) And, care to guess what just happens to exist in abundance at the Great Salt Lake? Yes, those bags of water softener salt at your local grocery store didn’t travel far.
About Kinetico water softeners and saving salt:
A water softener “softens” water by removing harmful particles. Once it stores up enough of them, it uses salt to clear them out. The process is called regneration. How does it know when to regnerate? Most water softeners use a tiny computer to guesstimate. Trouble is, those tiny computers usually guesstimate wrong. Not Kinetico. It uses a highly-reliable mechanical process that determines exactly when to cycle. On average, it cuts the amount of salt used by about two thirds. (It also keeps working when the power goes out.) That’s one bag of salt for every three your neighbors lug into the house. That’s why your wallet will love your Kinetico water softener. So will your lower back.
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– We bring soft water to Utah, including Bountiful, Ogden, Park City, Provo, and Salt Lake City. Contact us today to get a free estimate for your home or business.