The Great Salt Lake Desert (colloquially referred to as the West Desert) is a large
dry lake
A dry lake bed, also known as a playa, is a basin or depression that formerly contained a standing surface water body, which disappears when evaporation processes exceeds recharge. If the floor of a dry lake is covered by deposits of alkaline c ...
in northern
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...
, United States, between the
Great Salt Lake and the
Nevada
Nevada ( ; ) is a state in the Western region of the United States. It is bordered by Oregon to the northwest, Idaho to the northeast, California to the west, Arizona to the southeast, and Utah to the east. Nevada is the 7th-most extensive, ...
border. It is
a subregion of the larger
Great Basin Desert
The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range. The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife Fund, and the Central Basi ...
, and noted for white
evaporite
An evaporite () is a water- soluble sedimentary mineral deposit that results from concentration and crystallization by evaporation from an aqueous solution. There are two types of evaporite deposits: marine, which can also be described as oce ...
Lake Bonneville
Lake Bonneville was the largest Late Pleistocene paleolake in the Great Basin of western North America. It was a pluvial lake that formed in response to an increase in precipitation and a decrease in evaporation as a result of cooler temperature ...
salt
Salt is a mineral composed primarily of sodium chloride (NaCl), a chemical compound belonging to the larger class of salts; salt in the form of a natural crystalline mineral is known as rock salt or halite. Salt is present in vast quanti ...
deposits including the
Bonneville Salt Flats
The Bonneville Salt Flats are a densely packed salt pan in Tooele County in northwestern Utah. A remnant of the Pleistocene Lake Bonneville, it is the largest of many salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake. It is public land managed by the ...
.
Description

Several small mountain ranges occupy the edges of the desert, such as the
Cedar Mountains Cedar Mountains may refer to:
* Cedar Mountains (Nevada)
* Cedar Mountains (Iron County), a mountain range of Utah
* Cedar Mountains (Tooele County, Utah)
** Cedar Mountain Wilderness
See also
* Cedar Mountain Range
The Cedar Mountain Range is ...
, Lakeside Mountains,
Silver Island Mountains,
Hogup Mountains
The Hogup Mountains are a small 25-mile (40 km) long mountain range located in central Box Elder County, Utah, United States. The range lies on the northwest perimeter of the Great Salt Lake, and also lies surrounded by the Great Salt La ...
, Grassy Mountains, and Newfoundland Mountains. On the western edge of the desert, just across the border in Nevada, stands
Pilot Peak in the
Pilot Range
The Pilot Range is a mountain range straddling the border of Box Elder County, Utah and Elko County, Nevada, United States. Lying 50 miles west of the Great Salt Lake, the range forms part of the north-west border of the Great Salt Lake Des ...
.
The desert is cool during the winter and includes unusual plants adapted to the dry conditions. Most of the desert receives less than of annual precipitation.
The salt crust covering the desert reforms yearly when the rain evaporates. The military's
Utah Test and Training Range
The Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) is a Department of Defense military testing and training area located in Utah's West Desert, approximately west of Salt Lake City, Utah. UTTR is currently the largest contiguous block of over-land superso ...
is in the northern portion of the desert. The lowest part of Juab County is located just south of the Dugway Proving Grounds, about northwest of the northwest corner of the Fish Springs Range.
History
During
Jedediah Smith's 1826-27 expedition, Robert Evans died in the desert and in the 1840s, westward emigrants used the
Hastings Cutoff
The Hastings Cutoff was an alternative route for westward emigrants to travel to California, as proposed by Lansford Hastings in ''The Emigrant's Guide to Oregon and California''. The ill-fated Donner Party infamously took the route in 1846.
...
through of Great Salt Lake desert to reduce the distance to
California
California is a state in the Western United States, located along the Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the most populous U.S. state and the 3rd largest by area. It is also the ...
. The 1846
Donner Party
The Donner Party, sometimes called the Donner–Reed Party, was a group of American pioneers who migrated to California in a wagon train from the Midwest. Delayed by a multitude of mishaps, they spent the winter of 1846–1847 snowbound in th ...
's difficulties in making the crossing contributed to their becoming snowbound in the
Sierra Nevada
The Sierra Nevada () is a mountain range in the Western United States, between the Central Valley of California and the Great Basin. The vast majority of the range lies in the state of California, although the Carson Range spur lies primari ...
.
Howard Stansbury
Howard Stansbury (February 8, 1806 – April 17, 1863) was a major in the U.S. Army Corps of Topographical Engineers. His most notable achievement was leading a two-year expedition (1849–1851) to survey the Great Salt Lake and its surroundings ...
explored the desert in 1849. In 1956,
I-80
Interstate 80 (I-80) is an east–west transcontinental freeway that crosses the United States from downtown San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey, in the New York metropolitan area. The highway was designated in 1956 as o ...
replaced the
Wendover Cut-off
The Wendover Cut-off, also called the Wendover Road or Wendover Route, is a two-lane highway in the western part of Tooele County in the U.S. state of Utah. Stretching from Wendover to Knolls across the Bonneville Salt Flats, a part of the Great ...
across the desert, including a straight east-west section for ~ between the Cedar Mountains to the east and
Wendover
Wendover is a market town and civil parish at the foot of the Chiltern Hills in Buckinghamshire, England. It is situated at the point where the main road across the Chilterns between London and Aylesbury intersects with the once important road ...
on the Utah/Nevada border. Following a railway completed across the desert's
Bonneville Salt Flats
The Bonneville Salt Flats are a densely packed salt pan in Tooele County in northwestern Utah. A remnant of the Pleistocene Lake Bonneville, it is the largest of many salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake. It is public land managed by the ...
in 1910, the flats were first used as a speedway in 1914. The world records for highest land speeds are regularly broken here.
Recent discoveries
In July 2022, archaeologists discovered about 88 footprints had been left behind by humans at least 12,000 years ago using
ground-penetrating radar
Ground-penetrating radar (GPR) is a Geophysics, geophysical method that uses radar pulses to Geophysical imaging, image the subsurface. It is a non-intrusive method of surveying the sub-surface to investigate underground utilities such as concrete, ...
(GPR). So-called 'Ghost tracks' by archaeologists, footprints absorb moisture and are only visible when it rains and disappear when dry.
Climate
The Great Salt Lake Desert experiences a desert climate with hot summers and cold winters. The desert is an excellent example of a
cold desert climate
The desert climate or arid climate (in the Köppen climate classification ''BWh'' and ''BWk''), is a dry climate sub-type in which there is a severe excess of evaporation over precipitation. The typically bald, rocky, or sandy surfaces in deser ...
. The desert's elevation, 4,250 feet above sea level, makes temperatures cooler than lower elevation deserts, such as the
Mojave
Mojave or Mohave most often refers to:
*Mojave Desert
*Mojave River
*Mohave people
*Mojave language
Mojave or Mohave may also refer to:
Places
* Fort Mojave Indian Reservation
* Mohave County, Arizona
* Mohave Valley, a valley in Arizona
* Mohav ...
. Due to the high elevation and aridity, temperatures
drop sharply after sunset. Summer nights are comfortably cool. Winter highs are generally above freezing, and winter nights are bitterly cold, with temperatures often dropping below freezing.
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Deserts and xeric shrublands in the United States
Ecoregions of the United States
Deserts of Utah
Great Basin deserts
Geography of Box Elder County, Utah
Geography of Juab County, Utah
Geography of Tooele County, Utah