- Established: Temporary settlement, by Central Pacific Railroad, during 1869 construction of original transcontinental railroad
- Origin of Name: Named after the Great Salt Lake
- Miles from San Francisco: 755.6
- Used by Railroad: 1899- 1906
- Railroad Function: Two separate railroad sidings existed at Lake: West Lake, used by the railroad 1877- 1910, and East Lake; the two sites are now separated by a marsh one-mile wide and conditions are so wet that the “wye” is hardly visible today
- Historical Overview: On April 28, 1869, a record was set when Central Pacific crews laid ten miles of track in one twelve-hour period from the station at Lake; the stage had been set months before when Union Pacific crews laid nearly 8 miles of track in a day; Charles Crocker, the construction supervisor of the Central Pacific, annoyed at the attention Union Pacific had attracted, bet $10,000 that his crew could lay ten miles of track in a twelve-hour day, Vice President Thomas Durant of the Union Pacific accepted the bet on the spot; Crocker patiently and strategically waited for the day to stage the spectacle, waiting until the UP track was less than 10 miles of the agreed-upon meeting place at Promontory, so there was no chance the UP could break their record; Union Pacific officials spent the day in CP’s camps, confident that the noble attempt would be for naught; a crack crew of burly Irish rail-layers, armed with heavy tongs, felt up to the seemingly impossible task: Michael Shay, Patrick Joyce, Michael Kennedy, Thomas Dailey, George Elliott, Michael Sullivan, Edward Killeen and Fred McNamara, accompanied by an army of support materials and manpower laid over six miles of track by the noon whistle; pausing for lunch, the team insisted on continuing, refusing to allow the hand-picked back-up crew that was waiting in the wings to take their places; bending rails took another hour, then the crew was off to set a gargantuan record; at the end of the twelve-hour period, the crew had laid 10 miles and 56 feet of track; as soon as their work was done, Jim Campbell, a CP supervisor, ran a locomotive over the entire length of track at forty miles an hour to prove it was a sound job as well; that day each man unbelievably lifted 125 tons of iron, not counting their heavy iron tongs; a total of 25,800 ties, 3,250 rails, 28,136 spikes and 14,080 bolts were utilized in this historic, super-human effort; it was reported that Crocker never got paid the $10,000 Durant wagered, but an unfathomable record had been set that day.
- Location: Five miles southeast of Kosmo on the Central Pacific route, south of the Great Salt Lake; after this historic day, the CP was within 4 miles of Promontory
- No Population estimates for this isolated northern Utah rail siding; populations ranged from 17 to 100 resided here during the 1870s and 1880s
