Bathing Beauties at Black Rock on the Great Salt Lake, circa 1860s. From the Charles Roscoe Savage Photograph Collection, Marriott Digital Library. 

Photo showing Black Rock, a rock outcrop at the south shore of the Great Salt Lake, near the Salt Lake-Tooele County line, Utah, circa 1920-1924. From the Great Salt Lake Photograph Collection, Marriott Digital Library.

Click here for the full oral history with Bonnie Baxter

Bonnie Baxter is a professor of biology at Westminster College in Salt Lake City and the director of the Great Salt Lake Institute. Fascinated by science from a young age, she pursued work in genetics and DNA. Her interest has always been in liberal arts education, which is how she found Westminster College, and, in turn, began her relationship with the Great Salt Lake. She studies halophiles (salt-loving bacteria) and works with people of widely divergent backgrounds who are also interested in the Lake. Through the Great Salt Lake Institute, she has encouraged interdisciplinary relationships between people all over the world. Dr. Baxter discusses her work with the Lake at some length and shares her favorite areas. She also emphasizes the importance of interaction with the ecosystem and believes strongly that children need to be involved with that interaction.

Photo showing Wasatch Mountain Club members perched on Black Rock on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, Utah. Photo taken June 1st 1931. From the Wasatch Mountain Club Photograph Collection, Marriott Digital Library. 

Photo of the ruins of the Heber C. Kimball house near Black Rock on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, Utah. Photo taken June 1st 1931. From the Wasatch Mountain Club Photograph Collection, Marriott Digital Library. 

Ruins of the Heber C. Kimball house at Black Rock. Photograph taken January 1954 by Mr. B.G. Carmen. Mr. R.H. Cowburn, Donor. From Classified Photograph Collection, Copyright Utah State Historical Society.