Text by Ella Sorenson. The Great Salt Lake is a treasure chest filled with natural wonders, a unique and magnificent ecosystem whose varied habitats range from open water, saltier than the ocean, to a vast complex of freshwater marshes. Wave-eroded shorelines of Lake Bonneville, etched high on the foothills above today's lake level, bear silent witness to a basin with water of greatly changing depths. Scientists tell us that Bonneville's reign was neither ancient nor long, but only a moment in recent geological time. For more than a million years, the site of today s Great Salt Lake has cradled a long succession of unnamed fresh and salt water lakes.
Continuous change is the only constant here.
The Layton Wetlands Preserve is an undiked natural wetland located on the eastern periphery of shallow Farmington Bay. It consists of 1,472 acres, and was The Nature Conservancy's first preserve in Utah. The preserve is part of a spectacular complex of wetlands where nature has bestowed an incredibly rich abundance and diversity of life. Water from several small creeks originating in the Wasatch Mountains to the east enters the lake, not abruptly, but gradually, spreading its flow widely in little rivulets across an expansive saline mud flat. Here fresh water meets the salty lake, creating a changing mosaic of salt, brackish and fresh marshes, ponds, pools, sloughs and mudflats.