While cycling to Saltair recently, along the shoreline of Great Salt Lake, I noticed large signs advertising: “Phase 1 Coming Soon For Lease: Class A Bulk Distribution.” What this means is that the building of Salt Lake’s proposed inland port has begun.
Its proponents claim that the port will boost Salt Lake into becoming “The Gateway to the West.” In my study, I have discovered that this claim rests significantly on deception and exaggeration.
For example, I drove past an impressive inland port only a day’s drive from Salt Lake that already exists. Driving west from Phoenix on Route 60, I skirted the boundary of a 700-plus-acre inland port consisting of huge cranes and containment boxes, miles of railroad tracks, trains and train cars and innumerable automobiles, trucks and buses.