Upon his report of the vast dimensions of the strange inland body of salt water, they all became anxious to learn whether other streams did not flow into the lake, and if so, there were new fields in which to try their luck in trapping beaver.  To learn the fact four of them constructed boats of skins, and paddling into the lake, explored it.

Of course, it cannot be clearly proven that Old Jim Bridger was the first white man who saw the Great Salt Lake, but all others who have made claim to its discovery have not satisfied the demands of truth in their particulars, so the honour must and does rest upon Bridger; for no more authentic account of its discovery can be found.  His statement is corroborated by such men as Robert Campbell, of St. Louis, and other famous mountaineers of the time.

There is a pretty piece of fiction connected with one of the claimants
to its discovery, by the celebrated Jim Beckwourth, that famous
Afro-American, who was chief of the Crow Nation.  It says: 
        One day in June, 1822, a beautiful Indian maiden offered him
        a pair of moccasins if he would procure for her an antelope
        skin, and bring the animal’s brains with it, in order that
        she might dress a deerskin.  Beckwourth started out in his
        mission, but failed to see any antelope.  He did see an
        Indian coming toward him, whose brains he proposed to himself
        to take to the savage maiden after he had killed the buck,
        believing that she would never discover the difference, and
        had pulled up his rifle to fire when he happily saw that his
        supposed savage was William H. Ashley, of the American Fur
        Company, and who told him that he had sailed through Green
        River into the Great Salt Lake.

It may be true that Ashley did sail upon the Great Salt Lake before Bridger; but the story lacks confirmation; it has not that reliable endorsement which Bridger’s claim possesses.

Jedediah Smith, another of the famous coterie of old trappers, called the lake Utah, and the river which flows into it from the south after the celebrated Ashley.

Much has been given to the world in relation to the vicinity of the
Great Salt Lake and the contiguous part of Utah by the famous author,
Washington Irving, in his adventures of Captain Bonneville, but it
should be taken cum grano salis; for, as Bancroft truthfully observes: 
        Irving humoured the captain, whose vanity prompted him to give
        his own name to the lake, although he had not a shadow of
        title to that distinction.  Yet on Bonneville’s map of the
        region, the lake is plainly lettered “Bonneville’s Lake.”