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Show The History of Mining in Utah : ' ... . ': f Are with Metals Extracted finds its resting place on slag dur once its surged up from far beneath the surface to provide Utah resources. (EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the second of .series ol eight articles on the history of the metal mining industry in Utah.) With the end of the water period, the record tells of the beginnings of the Rocky Mountain uplift, of the formation of the Great Basin ' and how its rock formations were being squeezed and faulted and contorted betweer the Wasatch on the east and the Sierra Nevada on the west, of how the fissures and cracks were formed to allow the penetration of metal bearing solutions solu-tions and of how in places the sur-' sur-' face of the earth failed and the molten material underneath surged up causing rhyolite flows and porphyry and monzonite infusions, some of which, as in Bingham, carried car-ried enough mineral to become valuable val-uable as ore. Much of Utah literally liter-ally rose out of the water to share here resources with mankind. And then came the ice ages. As the ice of the last one melted 1 away there was formed in Utah a great fresh water lake, known as Lake Bonneville and in Nevada another an-other one that has been called Lake : Lahontan. The markings of Lake Bonneville can easily be seen on : the flanks of various mountain ranges. From these benches its configuration is easily determined. But it has passed into geological history. The great Sierra Nevada mountains formed a barrier for tli warm, moisture-ladden winds r the Pacific, causing them to di . their moisture before they couT.. pass. So this area, hemmed in by the Rockies and the Wasatch on the east and the Sierras on the west, was deprived of its normal amount of rainfall and the regin became more or less arid. On tl. floor of old Lake Bonneville iv- , side 90 per cent of the people of j Utah and 75 per cent of its ir- .; rigable land is there. ! Then came man, first the savage and then the civilized man. Tli Pioneers who arrived under tlu ! leadership of Brigham Young, Jul 24, 1847, as a result of religious persecution, moved from Nauvoo in the State f Illinois, and began the colonization of the territo" They turned the water from mountains to the soil and thus veloped modern irrigation, early comers adopted a policy making themselves self supporti. as to foodstuffs, raiment and hnu. ing. '(The third article in this series will appear in these columns col-umns soon.) |