On Friday, the park hosted a grand opening for its newly expanded visitor center, inviting the public to see some of the new capabilities the park has to educate and guide guests.

Antelope Island Park Manager Doranne Pittz said the expansion has taken the 5,000-square-foot early-1990s built visitor center and grown it to just over 33,000 square feet.

“This project has actually been underway for probably a decade,” she said. “However, the build itself took about a year and a half, and we’re finally here and we’re open and we’re super excited.”

The expansion includes several interactive exhibits including a tank filled with a sample of water from the Great Salt Lake and brine shrimp, a model of the island that lets visitors highlight everything from trails to where bison herds tend to congregate on the island, exhibits highlighting local Native American culture and exhibits about the various animals that call the island home.

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

Pittz said one of the biggest reasons for the expansion was the need for space to host larger groups.

“The original visitor center was phenomenal for what it was,” she said. “But we get so many school groups out here. We get thousands of school children each year, and in our old visitor center, we were not able to invite those students into the center at all. Now with this facility, we can have multiple school groups at once come into the visitor and learning center and interact with our exhibits and get unexposed from the elements. They get a little reprieve and get to enjoy and potentially even watch a film.”

Antelope Island Theater Manager Todd Tanner told the Standard-Examiner that the expansion will make for a great launching point for visitors’ Antelope Island State Park experience.

“A lot of our visitors come and they’ll tell us at the gate, ‘I only have an hour or two, what can I do?'” he said. “This gives such a good starting point that people can come here and they can experience the lake from the decking outdoors, they can experience the exhibits inside, so you can really learn a whole lot right here, even just in an hour.”

The centerpiece of of the added spaces is the Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Theater, a 200-seat theater which will show the 45-minute documentary film “Secrets of the Great Salt Lake.” The additional spaces also include a larger gift shop, conference and classroom space, a “learning lounge” for park programming and even an event space that can be rented by the public. There is also deck space wrapping around much of the facility that allows for views of the Great Salt Lake.

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

“We see right around a million visitors a year,” Pittz said. “Having a space like this to welcome all of our guests, whether they be local, out of state or even international — we get quite a few international visitors to the park as well — we want to show them the best parts of Utah in the best way we can.”

She added that the addition of an event space could even bring in people that normally wouldn’t have utilized the park.

“Now even our corporate partners can come and have a retreat or have a meeting out here in a wonderful space,” she said. “You can have your wedding out here. We just want people to interact with the island and with state parks in a new and exciting way.”

Pittz said she’s happy with how the expansion ultimately turned out.

“What I love most about it is that it really fits in with the island,” she said. “The architecture is beautiful, but it doesn’t stand out in a way that it feels like it’s sticking out like a sore thumb. It really blends in with the landscape and is a beautiful addition to the island.”

Rob Nielsen, Standard-Examiner

Tanner said it even rivals what visitors can find elsewhere in the state.

“I think that the building itself really exceeded expectations,” he said. “I would dare say that this is the most beautiful visitor center that we have in Utah. I think it’s even more spectacular than the visitor centers that we have at national parks.”

The Antelope Island State Park Visitor Center is open from 9 a.m.-5 p.m. daily. For more information on Antelope Island State Park, visit https://stateparks.utah.gov/parks/antelope-island/.

Antelope Island Theater manager Todd Tanner shows off one of the new interactive exhibits in the expanded Antelope Island State Park Visitor Center during its grand opening celebration on Friday, Oct. 2, 2026

The expanded Antelope Island State Park Visitor Center during its public grand opening on Friday, Oct. 2, 2026.

A bison statue overlooks the Great Salt Lake from the newly expanded Antelope Island State Park Visitor Center on Friday, Oct. 2, 2026.

The centerpiece of the newly expanded Antelope Island State Park Visitor Center is the Larry H. & Gail Miller Family Theater, a 200-seat theater which will show the 45-minute documentary film "Secrets of the Great Salt Lake." The theater is pictured here during the visitor center's grand opening on Friday, Oct. 2, 2026.

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