The Antelope Island American bison heard began with an entrepreneurial venture by a man named William Glasmann. In 1889, he and a Mr. John Lynch purchased the Jeter Clinton Property on Clinton Landing Road in
Lake Point, Utah. The property contained the historic Jeter Clinton home and the now destroyed Lake House Hotel, which saw its hay day in 1870’s during a historic lake level high point for the Great Salt Lake, but had since fallen into decline as the lake receded and the newer Garfield Resort was built on the water just 1.5 miles east down the shoreline. In the same year of this land acquisition, Glasmann had visited Texas and met Charles Jesse “Buffalo” Jones of Kansas. He put a down payment on acquiring a portion of the Jones American bison herd and offered for him to manage what Glasmann called his Utah Buffalo Zoological Gardens. The first American bison arrived in Lake Point in October of 1889 in a starved and weak state from Manitoba. In less than a year, Glasmann’s herd grew to seventeen. The acquired Clinton land and the buffalo were part of a real estate scheme to sell subdivided cottage lots with beautiful planted trees, gardens, and culinary water wells with the tourist attraction of a Buffalo Park. The venture was unsuccessful and on February 18, 1893, Glasmann’s Buffalo Park Land Company sold its seventeen American bison to John E. Dooley. The bison were herded around the lake up to Farmington, loaded on a flat boat, and taken to Antelope Island. At the time of the arrival of early European explorers and pioneers, there were no bison on the island as they had become extinct over much of their range by the late 19th century. Mr. Dooley brought the American bison to Antelope Island in hopes of sustaining a herd that could be hunted.
Bison hunting started in 1896 and by the early 20th century, several hundred bison were present on the island. The herd was managed from the
Fielding Garr Ranch on the east side of the island. The herd appeared in the film
The Covered Wagon in 1923. The silent movie was filmed on Antelope Island for a scene requiring a buffalo hunt and a
stampede. At the time the herd on Antelope Island was possibly the largest herd of bison in the United States. After much effort, about 350 of the animals were herded into a stampede to be filmed. The movie is considered by some people to be the first great Western epic and it established some of the clichés that persist in Western movies, such as
circling the wagons in time of danger or attacks. During the movie, seven buffalo were shot and killed for the hunting scenes. "Don't grow sentimental over the seven," said James Cruze, the director of the film. "The folks out there would like to get rid of the whole herd and they would, but for the sentimental hubbub that is always raised when they talk of rounding out the buffalo. The animals are worthless - there isn't worse meat on earth to eat - and they ruin the whole territory for cattle grazing purposes. So the buffalo remain - sentimental reminders of the America of the past." Dooley sold the herd to A. H. Leonard in 1924. Leonard intended to sell the bison to zoos, but was not able to corral them. Thereafter, public sentiment changed and activists began to call for the protection of the herd on the island. Bison hunting was scaled down. The Antelope Island bison herd and the island remained in private hands until 1969 when the northern of the island were purchased by the State of Utah. In 1981, the State of Utah purchased the
Fielding Garr Ranch and the rest of the island, including ownership of the herd which was once again numbering in the hundreds. Since that time, hunting has been restricted to only a few animals per year and the bison have been carefully managed and monitored for health and absence of disease. Every year, in late October, all the bison are herded towards a central area in the Great Buffalo Roundup and sent briefly into pens where they are examined, weighed and vaccinated and decisions made on culling and selecting breeding stock. The majority of the bison are then turned loose within a few days and allowed to roam free the rest of the year. The Antelope Island bison herd fluctuates between 550 and 700, and is one of the largest
publicly owned bison herds in the nation. The reason for the variability of the size of the herd is that approximately 150 to 200 calves are born every year, and since this is prime prairie habitat for bison, with no significant predators, the herd can increase by up to twenty-five percent every year. It is felt that 700 is near the maximum preferred carrying capacity for bison on the island, so the excess bison are culled and removed. Bison from Antelope Island are often sent to other herds around North America because of their genetic isolation, some unique genetic markers contained in the population, and because of their disease-free condition. Some are also purchased at the pen site in a yearly
public auction and are taken as meat or breeding stock for commercial buffalo farms in other parts of the world. "Though some resent the notion of corralling a wild beast like the bison for what amounts to a physical, most understand that the state means to protect the herd." ==Ecology==