Though momentous, this wedding of the rails was not efficient Great Salt Lake had caused the engineers to build a detour onto the rugged mountains of the peninsula. On May 10, 1869, the Transcontinental Railroad was completed on the Promontory Peninsula on the north end of Great Salt Lake. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (or Mormons) arrived in the area in 1847 and used the islands for grazing cattle and also enjoyed swimming in the lake and holding picnics on its shores. On that expedition, Kit Carson visited one of the lake's islands and carved a cross near the summit of an island that is now called Fremont Island. The first thorough exploration of the lake was by a party led by John C. The first non-native person to see the lake is said to be explorer Jim Bridger in 1824, according to the Utah Geological Survey. Local Native American tribes knew about Great Salt Lake, of course. The modern Great Salt Lake emerged about 10,000 years ago. The Bonneville Salt Flats in western Utah are a remnant of Lake Bonneville. There are four different shorelines visible as ridges on Utah’s Wasatch Mountains. These changes were due to increased evaporation and a warming climate. Lake Bonneville underwent several periods of shrinking and stabilizing. The lake lost about 375 feet (114 m) of water, according to the USGS. Nearly 17,000 years ago, Lake Bonneville overflowed at Red Rock Pass in Idaho and a yearlong flood ensued. Lake Bonneville formed about 30,000 years ago from a small saline lake. Lake Bonneville was 325 miles (523 km) long and 135 miles (217 km) wide and 1,000 feet (308 m) deep. The lake is a remnant of Lake Bonneville, an ancient, freshwater lake from the last Ice Age, said Bonnie Baxter, director of the Great Salt Lake Institute and a professor of biology at Westminster College in Salt Lake City. It features a flat expanse of salt crust called the Bonneville Salt Flats, which has ideal conditions for attempts to break land-speed records. The Great Salt Lake Desert is west of the lake. The Wasatch Range rises to the east of the lake, with several 11,000-foot mountains. ![]() Great Salt Lake lies in a region of the Western United States called the Great Basin. ![]()
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