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where did the Great Salt lake come from?
buschmaster
Member Posts: 14,229 ✭✭✭
millions of years ago, North America had a lot of water on it.
by 1 million years ago it had receded some.
after that went away, the eastern shore left the sandhills that we have in western Nebraska.
the other states with a shoreline didn't get sandhills because they didn't need them.
in the last ice age there were large lakes in the Western US, and Texas was finally able to play football.
lake Bonneville was about as big as Lake Michigan.
around 15,000 BC a natural dam broke and it spewed all over Idaho, drowning foxes and deer and bunnies.
it left the Great Salt Lake which is 10 times smaller.
by 1 million years ago it had receded some.
after that went away, the eastern shore left the sandhills that we have in western Nebraska.
the other states with a shoreline didn't get sandhills because they didn't need them.
in the last ice age there were large lakes in the Western US, and Texas was finally able to play football.
lake Bonneville was about as big as Lake Michigan.
around 15,000 BC a natural dam broke and it spewed all over Idaho, drowning foxes and deer and bunnies.
it left the Great Salt Lake which is 10 times smaller.
Comments
At its highest, it managed to breach through at its northern end, and the resulting water flow and erosion carved a cleft that drained almost all of it down the Snake River. The Snake River Grand Canyon is a result, and estimates are that all that rock was carved away in as little as a month. Talk about a gusher!
Today, Great Salt Lake is a terminus lake. It has no outflow. All the water that feeds into it disappears only by evaporation, leaving whatever salts and minerals the water contained behind. Thus we have Bonneville Salt Flats, and the GSL itself, which can be up to eight times saltier than the oceans.
Everything else that gets washed into GSL soon dies due to the salt level. Even kills carp. There's a species of brine fly that lives on algae and lays its eggs in the GSL. There are bazillions of those non-biting flies and eggs, which become a magnet for all kinds of waterfowl from ducks and shorebirds to geese and swans. The waterfowl hunting here is amazing. GSL also breeds a small but extremely aggressive mosquito, unfortunately. Way too damn many of those!
It's not due to GSL or even the old Lake Bonneville, but we have salt mines in southern Utah that were deposited by the ancient seas shown in the first part of this thread. Redmond Sea Salt is the product, and it is indeed a great tasting salt. I rank it with the most expensive Hawaiian or Himalayan stuff for variety of flavor and "sweetness" due to its pristine and ancient chemical content.
Nowhere. It?s been there all along.
hmm... it was as big as Lake Michigan, but it shrunk to 1/10 the size... and who's got a Lake Michigan now? hmm...
As a young boy I once ordered Sea Monkeys from an add in a comic book. They sure didn't match the pictures in the sales promos! :shock: I kept them alive for several months before my younger brother put a goldfish into my Sea Monkey bowl!
There is a massive resort/dance hall/spa called Saltair on the shore near the City. Very popular back in the day. But it slowly corroded and dissolved in that brine, the lake smell dropped attendance, and it suffered major fires. There have been three revisions of it, and the last one is essentially abandoned. People used to take photos of themselves bobbing like corks in that super dense water - all tourists. No local will go near that water. There's a marina on the lake that's popular with some folks, but it's all sail boats. No engine lasts long in that brine. Or anything metal, for that matter.
SALTAIR
https://www.nytimes.com/1983/11/29/science/a-great-lost-river-gets-its-due.html
Interesting read, thanks for posting.
Just WOW! Instead of naming it the Great Salt Lake, I'd of named it America's Dead Sea! Pretty sure there were real estate agents involved in what we call the place!
Yep, the Longhorns travelled a long way to get a crowd of two with Paul and Old Blue...and the Aggies think they have a big bonfire!