Show CHAPTER II DESCRIPTION AND GENERAL INFORMATION Utah’s unique inland sea the Great Salt Lake is a body of water some seventy miles long and fifty wide the surface of which is approximately 4200 feet above sea level This elevation places the surface higher than the average elevation of the Allegheny mountains The length and width greatly with the seasons and with the cycles of lake oscillation the surface elevation naturally varies slightly also Being almost completely surrounded by flat plains barely higher than the lake water itself a slight rise in the water level extends the lake area conrise in siderably It has been estimated that a ten-fo- ot And the lake level would cover 240 square miles of plain since "its bottom is evidently even more level than the broad desert-vallewhich surround it" a fall in the lake level would probably uncover at least an equal amount of lake-be- d Since Stansbury’s survey in 1850 the water has varied as much as eighteen feet altering the shore-liin some places The highest level of the lake as much as fifteen miles since records have been kept was in 1873 and the lowest in hence the area vary ys ne 483 1 WPA 2 E F Writers’ Project Utah a Guide to the State Emmons King Survey of 40th Parallel II 431 |