Black Rock emerged tens of thousands of years ago when a piece of the Oquirrh Mountains rolled into old Lake Bonneville, and as the lake drained it became a landmark for humans for the next 13,000 years within the ancestral homelands of the Goshute, Shoshone, and Ute Tribes, who retain connections to this land today. European Americans later made Black Rock a frequent subject of significant paintings, etchings, and drawings, and when Utah began the state's art collection in the 1890s, the first work acquired was James Taylor Harwood's 1898 oil painting of Black Rock, which hangs in the Governor's Mansion. Black Rock was also home to a Great Salt Lake resort for bathing, boating, and other recreation from the 1860s to the 1960s, making it one of the lake's longest operating resorts, and the first documented recreational swim there was by leaders of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in July 1847.