Arizona republican., 1902-11-19
GREAT SALT LAKE BASIN.

As the traveller emerges from the beautiful Weber canon into the Great
 Salt Lake basin, which term is not con-
 fined to the small era now occupied by
 Salt Lake. but embraces nearly the
 whole of Utah and a large portion of Nevada and Idaho, he is struck by ob- . serving along the hillsides what ap- pears at first sight to be the lines of
 parallel iTrigating ditches. made possi- ply in years past by the industrious Mormon. or else possibly they are par allel roads of competing railways When, however, he traverses the great
 basin and follows these strange lines for hundreds of miles. and finds them located not merely along the lines of the Wasatch mountains, bounding the
 basin, but also on islands in the pres ent lake and on isolated mountains in
 the alkaline and barren desert which were once evidently islands in a far greater extension of the lake than at present, he abandons his idea Of han made irrigation ditches or railways and looks to some wider natural cause. He soon recognizes that these parallel lines
 or benches are shore lines of the lake where il stood. and for an definite | | the lake waters now occupy.
 The great basin. Of which Salt Lake is but a much shrunken and di-
 unfinished relic. occupies a vast era in both Utah and Nevada. This erea or basin was occupied by two principal 1 lakes, one called by geoIogists. Lake La Hontan, in Nevada, and the other Lake Bonneville in Utah. Salt Lake is the diminished relic of the latter. 1 The greatest ancient depth of the ! lake, as recorded by the highest ter race, called the Bonneville terrace. was ] 1,O50 feet, which was obtained over the site of the present Great Salt lake. The mean depth was 800 feet. As many as ! 13 benches have been observed but there are two or three more prominent than others, such as the top or Bonne- | vile bench, and below it the strongly marked Provo bench. The Provo bench | is 600 feet above the present level of the lake and 400 feet lower than the old or Bonneville bench. The floors ] of these benches may be 2c0 to 75O feet 1 wide. Between the Bonneville and Pro | vo benches are four subordina te | benches or entertainments. The highest or Bonneville bench is .OOO feet above | the present level of the Great Salt lake. | The area of the lake at it's greatest extent in the Bonneville stage was lg.- | 15O square miles; at the Provo or lower stage, 13,000 square miles, at the Stans- 1 bury CT lowest stage, above the pres ent stage, 1000 square miles
 MT. Gilbert records the history Of the lake and it's terraces as follows: First. 1 the intermediate stage second. Bon ! neville, and third, Stansbury stage. | Most of these stages, we believe. can i be seen from the Salt Lake bathing pa villion on the mountain south of it. i During what he calls the intermedi- ate stage, there were no persistent wat i CT stages leaving strong records. but | an oscillation of water surface. which : continued through the succeeding and great Bonneville epoch. The last stage 1 of this Bonneville series was the high
 est, and Immediately after the surface
 fell rapidly to the Provo horizon. where
 1t remained a long time, and has left | its record in a very well defined and notable terrace.
 The water margin, after receding l from the Provo shore to it's present DO .
 sition. halted occasionally by the Way
 and fingered longest at the Stansburv
 shore or stage.
 The Bonneville or main upper ter
 race was formed by an overfowing of
 the lake. whose outlet was at Red Rock
 pass at the north end of Cache valley
 m oneida county. Idaho. An old river
 bed connected Great Salt lake with Se- Vier lake. The Bonneville basin was
 subject to earthquakes during certain
 periods of the lakes history, the effects
 or which gre shown by fault escarp-
 nents and joints in the strata along it's
 ancient margin.
 | volcanoes were also a local phenom-
 ehon m parts of the lake, as shown in
 the PaVant butte and the extinct Ice | Springs cTaters.
 sat- Lake is not the remnant. as some
 have thought, of a true inland sea or
 fraction of the great briny ocean is6-