Visible fragments of the past around this site connect the present landscape to a vast span of time, from Precambrian rock to recent human history. Across the lake, Antelope Island moves slowly westward, and metamorphic rocks at its southern tip, formed under extreme heat and pressure about 1.7 billion years ago, are among the oldest on earth. To the south, the Oquirrh Mountains rose from geology shaped 250 to 300 million years ago, when the Oquirrh Basin lay beneath a great sea whose ancient life formed deep limestone beds later rotated and deformed by faults that created the basin and range topography of the Great Basin. About 15,000 years ago, this spot lay under more than 800 feet of fresh water in Lake Bonneville, while waves carved beach terraces along the Oquirrh Mountains and Antelope Island; in the last 10,000 years, as that lake shrank into the Great Salt Lake, the area's geological appearance changed little. During that later period, humans populated northern Utah, leaving evidence at Deadman Cave two miles southwest, where excavations found human remains dated to 4000, 6000, 6990, and 8300 years ago, along with archaeological evidence suggesting human use dating back 11,000 years, as well as pottery, manos, metates, projectile points, scrapers, sinkers, knives, waterfowl bones, and beads and pendants. Rock art at the southern tip of the Oquirrh Mountains, including spirals and other figures, also survives from these early inhabitants. In more recent centuries, the south shore of Great Salt Lake became a place of recreation and industry after pioneers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley. Two parallel earthen projections from the Lee Creek Area preserve traces of that era: the northern one is an abandoned aqueduct once used to pump salt water to evaporative ponds east of I-80, and the southern one is a levee leading to the deserted site of the original Saltair resort. Built in the early 1890s on wooden pilings five feet above the lake as the shoreline withdrew from a peak, Saltair endured fire, corrosion, waves, and strong winds, including one storm that toppled its rollercoaster into the lake, and today metal scraps, pipes, pottery fragments, and wood pilings still mark the outline of the resort.