The Great Salt Lake is the largest salt lake in North America and is located in Utah.
Great Salt Lake, Utah
1963, 1972, 1987
Text and Photos Courtesy of USGS
These images show the dramatic effects of the Great
Salt Lake's high water levels in the 1980s.
The Great Salt Lake is a terminal lake, with no outlet
rivers running to the ocean. Since water leaves the lake only through
evaporation, it leaves behind its dissolved minerals, making the lake up to 8
times as salty as sea water.
The lack of outlets also means the lake responds
dramatically to change in inflow. Rainy weather beginning in 1982 brought the
highest levels in recorded history, peaking in June 1986 and March-April 1987.
The lake is shallow for its size-- about 70 miles long and 30 miles wide, but
only about 40 feet deep. Because the lake basin is so shallowly sloped, extra
inflow to the lake makes it rise only slowly, but any rise means a large
increase in area.1 Highways,
causeways, and parts
of Salt Lake City were flooded or threatened in the 1980s, costing millions
of dollars.
The causeway
One of the first flood-control measures involved the
railroad causeway, a solid raised roadway cutting east-west across the lake. The
first transcontinental railroad, completed in 1869, had to go around the lake
and over the Promontory Mountains to the north. In 1902 the Southern Pacific
Railroad constructed a new line directly across the lake, so that engines would
not have to climb over the mountains. For 12 miles this route crossed a
trestle-- like a low bridge, made of 28,000 wooden pilings. In 1957-1959 this
trestle was replaced by the
causeway-- a solid raised roadway made of 50 million cubic yards of rock,
sand and gravel. This causeway was safer and allowed faster speeds.2
But unlike the trestle, which allowed water to
circulate freely underneath for 12 miles, the causeway had only two 15-foot
culverts. The causeway was constructed of semipermeable material which reduced
north-south flow, splitting the lake into two
parts. The south part received most of the lake's inflow from rivers, so it
became higher than the north part. The northern part also became saltier,
causing different types of algae and bacteria to grow which made it look pink,
while the southern part of the lake remained bluer. You should be able to see
this subtle difference in the
1972 Landsat image (in this image, reflectance in the visible-red range is
represented by green).
By 1 July 1984, after two years of above-normal
precipitation, the south part of the lake was 3.7 feet higher than the north,
the highest difference it would ever reach. By 3 August of that year, a 300-foot
section of the causeway was replaced by a low bridge, allowing water to flow
underneath. Within 2 months the difference between the south and north fell to
0.75 feet, and within a year it was only 0.5 feet. Although this was done as a
flood-control measure, it also had the effect of reducing the difference in salt
concentration. By 1987,
the north-south difference visible in Landsat images was reduced.3
The evaporation basin
In June 1986 the State of Utah began construction of a
system to pump excess water from the lake onto the Bonneville Salt Flats,
creating the Newfoundland Evaporation Basin. This project included a pumping
station at Hogup
Ridge, inlet and outlet canals, four trestles, almost 25 miles of dikes, a
37-mile natural-gas pipeline, and a 10-mile access road between Lakeside and the
pumping station. Pumps ran from April 1987 until June 1989, by which time the
lake had dropped almost 6 feet. The pumping caused about 2 feet of that drop.4
In the first year, about 1.5 million acre-feet of water
was pumped into the evaporation basin (an acre-foot is a volume that would cover
one acre with one foot of water).5
A dike was built at the southeast end of the basin to control the basin's water
level and let salt-rich water flow back into the lake-- so that if the level of
the basin rose high enough, some water would travel all the way around the Newfoundland
Mountains and back into the lake. Over the course of the project about
264,000-283,000 acre-feet of water actually did so.6
Great
Salt Lake, Utah [computer files]: Available: http://wwwdutslc.wr.usgs.gov/
greatsaltlake/saltlake.html [6 June 1997]
Gore, Rick, and Richardson, Jim, 1985, No way to run a
desert: National Geographic Magazine, vol. 167, no. 6, June, p. 694-719.
Ware, Leslie, 1984, The Great Salt Lake gets greater
every day: Audubon, National Audubon Society, New York, New York, vol. 86, no.
5, September, p. 118-131.
Great
Salt Lake, Utah
... Great Salt Lake, Utah. ... The buttons above will take you to the Great
Salt Lake related web pages. Thank you for visiting our site! ...
Utah's Great Salt Lake
and Ancient Lake Bonneville - UGS PI ...
... of animals lived in and around Lake Bonneville? Where did Lake Bonneville
go? Go
to Great Salt Lake What is the origin of the Great Salt Lake? Who discovered ...
Description: Electronic version of a
public information circular discusses the lake's origin, flooding,
developments...
Great Salt Lake
Planning Project Home Page
... PLANNING SCHEDULE FOR GREAT SALT LAKE REVISED (04/01/99). The schedule for
completion
of a comprehensive management plan for Great Salt Lake has been modified ...
Friends of Great Salt Lake
F RIENDS of Great Salt Lake The mission of F RIENDS of Great Salt Lake is to
preserve
and protect the Great Salt Lake ecosystem and to increase public ...
greatsalt
lakepage
Great Salt Lake Food Web (Photos on this introductory page by Shirley Naylor)
This
class project at Westminster College was created by the Fall 1998 class in ...
Utah.com
| Great Salt Lake State Marina
... Since its discovery, the Great Salt Lake has been an object of far-fetched
tales
and legends. Early settlers claimed to have seen a treacherous whirlpool in ...
Save
Our Canyons: Archive: Geographic: Great Salt Lake
... Archive: Geographic: Great Salt Lake. ... Group aims to map future of
shorelands Deseret
News September 25, 2000. Talks target east shore of the Great Salt Lake. ...
Encyclopedia.com
- Results for Great Salt Lake
... Electric Library's Free Encyclopedia Great Salt Lake largest salt lake in
North
America, in NW Utah. The shallow lake (c.13-24 ft/4-7.3 m deep) has ranged in
...
Description: (Encyclopedia.com)
Great
Salt Lake Country
UTAH'S GREAT SALT LAKE COUNTRY Surrounding ... sites. VISIT
UTAH'S UTAH'S GREAT SALT LAKE COUNTRY
The Great Salt Lake
... THE GREAT SALT LAKE. Since its discovery by fur trappers
in the 1820s, the lake has both mystified ...
The Great Salt
Lake
1) Sailing and the 2) Great Salt Lake, Salt Lake City, Utah, for beginners and
newcomers, sailboats, nature, ecology, links, information, history, biology, ...
Lake Systems -
Great Salt Lake
... Useful Links: The Great Salt Lake: Friends of Great Salt Lake; US Shorebird
Conservation
Plan - MANOMET Center for Conservation Sciences; The Greater Salt Lake ...
Untitled
... Full story. A little history of the Great Salt Lake. ... Here
are the players on and around the Great Salt Lake: ...
Great Salt Lake Audubon
Home, ... Welcome to Great Salt Lake Audubon. Please join us on a field trip,
or attend one of our special activities held throughout the year. ...
Description: Field trips, birding in Utah
section (includes state checklist and 10 Salt Lake City area birding...
Untitled
... History of Lake Bonneville and the. Great Salt Lake. (**Click
on lake levels to view a relief map of the lake**). ...
A Bird-Watching
Calendar for Great Salt Lake
... A Bird-Watching Calendar for Great Salt Lake. Here is a month-by-month
calendar
of a few bird-watching highlights in and around Great Salt Lake. Keep in mind
...
Great Salt
Lake
Great Salt Lake. Utah, USA. Hemispheric Reserve. Contact:
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, 515 E. 5300 So. ...
New Explanation For
Odd Behavior Of Great Salt Lake
... New Explanation For Odd Behavior Of Great Salt Lake Major cycles in the size
and
depth of Utah's Great Salt Lake are known from as far back as the 19th century
...
Barten
Company | Great Salt Lake Guidebook
... Great Salt Lake Guidebook. Field Trip and Auto Tour Guidebooks for Great
Salt Lake 1997 Great Salt Lake Circumspection Guidebook. ...
Unauthorized Site:
This site and its contents are not affiliated, connected,
associated with or authorized by the individual, family,
friends, or trademarked entities utilizing any part or
the subject's entire name. Any official or affiliated
sites that are related to this subject will be hyper
linked below upon submission
and Evisum, Inc. review.
Please join us in our mission to incorporate The Congressional Evolution of the United States of America discovery-based curriculum into the classroom of every primary and secondary school in the United States of America by July 2, 2026, the nation’s 250th birthday. , the United States of America: We The
People. Click Here