Lake Bonneville is a very young geologic feature, with its age measured in thousands of years rather than in millions or billions of years as are most of the geologic features in Utah. But it is very important. Most of the large deposits of sand and gravel mined along the Wasatch Front were formed by Lake Bonneville. Features formed by the lake provide an excellent laboratory to study how landforms develop beneath the surface of lakes and along lakeshores. The deformation of the lake's shorelines provides important information about the physical properties of the earth's crust. The lake's features provide a striking example of how dramatically changes of climate can affect the surface of the earth in only a few thousand years. The development of another Lake Bonneville would flood most of the thickly populated area of Utah. Fluctuations of Great Salt Lake, which are minor in comparison, can be expected every hundred years or so and can alter the lake level by a few feet to perhaps 4,219 feet above sea level. Yet even this would flood billions of dollars of development along the Great Salt Lake's shoreline.

Genevieve Atwood