Show THE TH aral BASIN HOST T oil THU 1 band LAND IS 18 TWE UIL WAT FItEl ast 11 lying 11 the 1110 ind nl tim bliem eluh alt whose waters mier escape ite ciul lh its 1 mountain ILU harris Tips between the rocky mountains Is and tho the sierra nevada lies a great aroa of relatively ely low land though portions ot of it U ure several thousand thou gand feet above sea level this Is designated by geographers aa as the great basin for tl i reason that few ot 0 it its rivera rivers flow beyond the mountain ba relora but lose themselves tn in the desert tania nals or empty into lakes whose waters arc are lost by evaporation says the dt director rector of the united Sta state teI geological am corvey vey nearly all of the country included in lix the great basin 1 Is truly desert land though the aspect of tome some parts has b been radically changed by irrigation moat most of the land la Is exceedingly cee ceo productive when water ta Is supplied to it aa as was demonstrated many mamy yeara years ago by the cormons mormons Mor mons who settled in utah and founded a etrone and prosperous community that i since grown and branched out ta la many direct lone law many thousand desert acres have been beer reclaimed in the great bin b 1 in and prosperous homm ho and yielding largo annual returns the rho locations of two irrigation pro of the government the druc true lee calrson project in nevada and the strawberry valley project in utah are in this area the new water supply for the city of los angeles Is taken from rom the great basin through a long conduit the conception and construction of which have been noteworthy features in recent engineering development along certain edgy edges ot of the thel basin where it U ascends to mountain crest crests like the wasatch range in utah and the sierra la in california there are many valuable sources of water power some of of f which have been profitably developed naturally in uch such a reg on the economic development of which Is 0 so o entirely dependent on tta its water burces ot of the flow ot of the dreams utmost an not fall fail to be of 0 the utmost during the last twenty yeam or more work of 0 this kind has been carried on by the united status states geological survey and the results are published annually in survey reports water supply paper just issued covers the results ot of stream measurements mado made la in the thi great basin in ln 1911 the work was done dor in all parts of the basin and the report which con eon balne two to hundred pages in includes lud records of flow obtained ut ninety eight eta tlona it la Is made up largely of tables giving records ot of the flow ot of the streams nt at gaj gating Z eta sta aloas during the year and contains only such text as la to cesary to explain the tables th tho 0 report Is intended for use of engineers and others who destro information in regard to the quant quantity lity of rater ater la III the streams at various in the year in connection with the utilization of the streams aras for various ty types re 3 of hydraulic construction great salt lake la is the largest of the water bodies bodles ot of the tho great basin it received receive i and disposes dispo pea of the discharge except that which la is diverted tor for irrigation 0 of a number of river the most important being the bear the weber and the jordan aher lakes are owens like lake which receives the flow front tho the raver basin walker lake into which Is LR discharged the water from the walker river basin C carson arso n blink sink including hamboldt lake into which flow the waters of carson ca and gium boldt rivera and py pyramid hamid and winnemucca uke which receive the discharge of truckee river 11 1 these lakes ao we a o located in nevada except the gm gervat at salt lake which Is in utah and bownas lake which Is in la eastern california in the oregon portion of the great basin baslin th thre re are a number of lakee lakes including malbeuf Mal beur heur harney and warner lake tahoe taboo which lies partly la CalU california ornia and partly la in nevada la is a high sierra lake receives rec elvee the water from tee the mount mountain aln peaks and discharges it through truckee river into pyramid and hakea there are many other bodies of water of greater or lees less importance |