Nancy Spaty, age 10, of Conway, Ark., for her question:
HOW WAS THE GREAT SALT LAKE FORMED?
There's a large desert region in the Western United States that is called the Great Basin. It is called a basin because the waters of its streams and lakes remain within it.
The streams either dry up or empty into one of the basin's lakes or sinks where much of the water evaporates. A sink is a low place that holds water and the largest in the Great Basin is the Great Salt Lake.
Scientists rate the Great Salt Lake in the northwestern part of Utah as one of the world's natural wonders. The large inland sea is believed to have once been part of a very large fresh water lake which lay in that region ages ago and was larger than Lake Huron.
Geologists call the old body of water Lake Bonneville. The original lake dried up thousands of years ago into several smaller bodies of water, the largest of which is today's Great Salt Lake.
Great Salt Lake's area is greatly affected by the amount of rainfall and the amount of water withdrawn from tributary rivers for irrigation. In winter, when evaporation of water is slowest, the Great Salt Lake usually increases greatly in size. On the average, the lake covers about 940 square miles and is about 75 miles long and 50 miles wide.
Even though the Great Salt is fed by fresh water streams, it is saltier than the ocean. This is because the waters of the lake do not drain away, but dry up, leaving salt behind. About 200,000 tons'of common salt are taken from the lake every year. The water contains three parts of salt to every part of other mineral.
On the shores of several islands located in the Great Salt Lake, which are white with salt, are located the breeding grounds for large flocks of gulls, ducks, geese and pellicans. The largest is called Antelope Island and on it farmers grow alfalfa and raise cattle. There is also a herd of wild buffalo living on Antelope Island, too.
The Southern Pacific railway crosses the central part of the Great Salt Lake at a spot called Lucin Cutoff. The tracks are built on a rock filled dike which is 13 miles long. Completed in 1959, the present dike replaces an old wooden tressle which was built in 1904 and which carried trains for more than half of a century.
Ages ago the entire area of what is now called the Great Salt Lake Desert was covered with water. The area, just west of Salt Lake City, extends south for about 110 miles and extends to Nevada, covering about 4,000 square miles. Bonneville Speedway, which is also called Bonneville Salt Flats, occupies about 100 square miles of extremely level salt beds near Wendover, close to the Nevada border. International auto speed records have been set here.