The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-01-01
MARVELS OF GREAT SALT LAKE.
Wonders of This Mysterious Inland Sea, Set Among the
Lofty Mountains.
BY COLONEL P. DOMAIN.

The most wonderful feature of all
this wonderful land, the mightiest
marvel of all marvellous Utah. an ocean
of majestic mystery clad in beauty d.
vine. is Great Salt Lake. the American
Dead Sea. Among the eartn's weird
wonders in water it has but n rival
or peer-the miracle-made sea whose
waves of doom and oblivion roll over
Sodom and Gomorrah, the Chicagos of
forty centuries ago.. Think of a lake
from $500 to 5000 uar miles IN area,
lying a thousand miles inland. at an al
titude of 1850 feet above the sea level.
whose waters are six times as salt as
those of the ocean; and. while il has
no outlet. four large rivers pouring
their ceaSelesS floods of fresh water
into it without raising its mysterious
surface a fraction of an inch. or ever
diminishing, so far as chemical analy-
sis can determine. its nd~eScribable
saltiness. Where does all the water so?
Where does all the salt. that no streams
can freshen, come from? Where are the
vast saline magazines from which it
draws its everlasting supplies? One
may stand upon its shores and ask a
thousand such questions, but no an
swer m from its mysterious depths,
in which nothing lives but death and
silence.
Salt Lake was once as large as Lake
Huron, and was over q thousand feet
deep. Its former benches and the marks
of its olden wave splaShings are as
plain upon the mountain benches as
though traced but yesterday 1t is now
about q hundred miles long. with an
average width of from twenty-five to
thirty miles. 1t is from fifty TO sixty
miles wide in some places, and us
greatest depth is about sixty feet. its
waters contain IS per cent OF
solid matter, mostly salt and soda,
with small proportions Of sulphur,
magnesia, calcium, bromide. potassium.
lithia and boracic acid. The Asiatic
Dead Sea water contain % per cert of
solids, including less salt and soda. and
much more magnesia. calcium and 20
tassium than Salt Lake. Atlantic
ocean water holds but 81 per cent of
solid material, of which salt constitutes
IS per cent. Hundreds of thousands
of ton of salt are made by natural
evaporation along the shores of the
lake, and at one place near Salt Lake
City a windy night V fails to pile
up many tons of soda. eliminated by
the movement Of the waves.
Compared with this a5t liquid treas
ure-house of riches, the greatest bo-
nanza mines of Utah or of the United
States dwindle to DE beggarS penny
boxes. Take out your pencil and do a
little figuring. Figures. it is said. will
not lie, and you will soon find yourself
standing d-umbfounded before your own
mathematical truths.
Say Salt Lake is 10 miles long. and
has an average width CT twenty-SeVen
miles; that gives an area of ?, 700 square
miles. There are - .S1S, 900 square fest
in a mile: so the lake has an area OF
5,271. $50. 900 square feet. Take 20 feet as
it's average depth; then 20 times f3.21.-
$4,000 Will givesus i.jg5. 433, 500. coo cubic
feet as the contents o. the lake. Now.
1928 per cent, or one-STXth of this.
according to the analysis of eminent
chemists. is salt and sulphate of soda.
That is, the lake contains go, 905. $780,
900 cubic feet of salt and sulphate OF
soda. OF this mass one-eightn is sui
phate of soda, and seven -eighth5 COM
mon salt. A cubic foo of suiphate Of
soda weighs fifty pounds. n d cubic
foot of common salt eighty sounds: so
we have, as the contents. in part, of this
unparalleled reservoir Of wealth. 1.56S.7
100. 000. 600 pounds. or 1S4.0S0. 900 Ions of
sulphate Of soda, and II, $50. 339, 200, 900
pounds, or S,7S9. 169, 600 tons of salt. Al
lowing ten tons 10 the carload. that
would be rs, 40S, 900 cars of soda, and
S7S, Ole, COO cars of salt. Taking thirty
feet as the total length of a freight car
and it's couplings, we would have a