Betty Wullstein, Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The diverse landscapes of Utah result in a wide variety of environmental conditions in which plants may become established. This entry briefly describes the habitats and major plant communities that may be encountered in traveling from the upper mountain peaks to the lower desert valleys. In addition, brief descriptions are provided of selected, common …
Green River
Roy Webb, Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The Green River was known to the Shoshone Indians as the Seeds-kee-dee-Agie, or Prairie Hen River. This name, in one version or another, was later adopted and widely used by the mountain men. Dominguez and Escalante named the Green the Rio de San Buenaventura, but the river was known by later Spaniard and Mexican …
Colorado River
Robert McPherson Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The Colorado River is one of the most important water systems in the United States. Draining watersheds from seven western states, it is divided into two major districts, the Upper Basin comprised of Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and New Mexico, and the Lower Basin formed by Nevada, Arizona, and California. With its headwaters in Wyoming …
Great Salt Lake
Richard H. Jackson Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The Great Salt Lake is both the largest body of water between the Great Lakes and the Pacific Ocean and the largest salt lake in the western hemisphere. The Great Salt Lake is the major remnant of Lake Bonneville, a large freshwater lake of the Pleistocene era (75,000–7,250 B.C.) that occupied much of …
Lake Bonneville
Genevieve Atwood Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The Great Salt Lake is the latest in a long succession of often more extensive lakes that have occupied the basin of Great Salt Lake over the past several million years. The sediments deposited in the lake and features formed by the waters of these successive lakes provide impressive geologic evidence about the past, …
Wasatch Mountains
Kevin Halleran, Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The product of 20 million years of geologic faulting, volcanic activity, and glaciation, the Wasatch Mountains, the western range of the Rocky Mountains, stretch across Utah from the Bear River in the north to Mount Nebo near Nephi in central part of the state. Most elevations along the range are generally between 9,000 and …
A Fatal Snowslide in Provo Canyon
Robert Carter History Blazer, December 1995 Frost and snow covered the ground that cold morning near the Telluride School of Electrical Engineering at the mouth of Provo Canyon. That was normal for February 19, 1897, but something else bothered William Slick, a resident student of the school, as he arose from his bed and gazed out the window. Something was …
Snowslides Devastated Northern Utah in 1875
Yvette D. Ison History Blazer, April 1995 To the early Mormon settlers northern Utah was one of the coldest places on earth. Bishop Hammond of Huntsville, a former whaler in the Arctic regions, reported in the Deseret News on February 6, 1883, that the weather in Huntsville, Utah, was more severe than he had ever experienced in the regions of …
Uinta Basin
Craig Fuller, Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The Uinta Basin and Mountains are located in the northeast corner of the state and are part of a larger physiographic area known as the Colorado Plateau Province. The Uinta Mountains, a folded and faulted anticlinorium (a succession of geological anticlines and synclines), are 150 miles long and are oriented in an east-west direction; …
Bonneville Salt Flats
Kevin B. Hallaran Utah History Encyclopedia, 1994 The Bonneville Salt Flats of the western Great Salt Lake Desert were formed through the evaporation of the Pleistocene-era Lake Bonneville. The salt flats are actually the bed of that once massive lake which rivaled in size present Lake Michigan. The flats are composed mainly of potash salts ranging in thickness from less …
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