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Show HISTORY GREAT i SALT LAKE TOLD Although its placid waters belie the fact that it was ever anything hut an inland salt-water sea. Great Salt lake was anciently a fresh water body with an outlet to the Pacific ocean. This was told to savants a"rom all over America by Professor Hyrum Schneider of the department of geology, University of Utah, who delivered a lecture on the ancestry of Great Salt lake as a feature of the convention sessions of the American Ameri-can Association for the Advancement Advance-ment of Science, Pacific division, held on the university campus recently. re-cently. Three hundred forty-six miles long, and 145 nules wide, with a depth of 1,000 feet, Lake Bonneville had an area of about 20,000 square miles about the size of Lake Huron, and ten times as large as the area of Great Salt lake. The lake was named after Captain Benjamin Bonneville j by Grove K. Gilbert, first geologist completely to chart the outline of , the ancient inland sea. The lake stood at this level, Dr. ; Schneider said, long enough to cut ' a shore terrace 210 feet wide in I quartzite, a very hard metamorphic I rock. Then -with increased moisture in the area the lake rose, from this j level, known as the '-Bonneville" : level.and developed an outlet at Red I Rock pass at the north end of Cache valley. For a comparatively long time the lake discharged a large vol-!j vol-!j time of water to the Pacific ocean j by way of the Snake and Columbia 'j rivers. This copious discharge of 1 water continued until the channel and lake had been lowered 375 feet. Then the actual phenomon of sal- inification occurred. The ' rainfall j and other moisture conditions, be-; be-; cause erf changes for a drier climate, were no longer able to maintain the 1 lake at this discharge level, and it dwindled to its present size by des-; des-; sic-ation. j Although the climate was colder ', than now, with attendant glaciers . in the Wasatch and Uintah moun-' moun-' tains, such animals as the musk ox. mountain sheep, horse, camel, and mammoth lived along its shores, according ac-cording to Dr. Schneider. |