Salt Creek

“ The heap is situated upon the highest point of land traversed by the Indian trail; upon the water-shed, or dividing ridge, between the streams which flow into Brush creek on the one side, and the Scioto river on the other.
Another heap of stones of like character, but somewhat less in size, is situated upon the top of a high, narrow hill, overlooking the small valley of Salt creek, near Tarlton, Pickaway county, Ohio. It is remarkable as having large numbers of crumbling human bones—to say nothing of living black snakes—intermingled, apparently without order, with the stones. ”

“ At one mile and a half crossed a broad gum salt creek, coming from the west, with a quantity of salt water in it. I have named this Peake Creek, after C.J. Peake, Esquire, M.L.A. After crossing this, we travelled over low rises with quartz, ironstone, and slate; the quartz predominating. Herrgott and Muller, who have both been long in the Victoria gold diggings, say that they have not seen any place that resembles those diggings so much as this does. The country seems as if it were covered with snow, from the quantity of quartz. At eleven miles passed a brackish water creek and salt lagoon ”

“ We rested for a short time, and then travelled down the Beaver until opposite Short Nose Creek, when we crossed the divide and camped on that stream. Two days later we pushed on to Cedar Creek, and then crossed over to Prairie Dog Creek. We had travelled only at night, hiding away all day in the brush that lined the creeks, and keeping a sharp lookout for Indians. So far, we had seen no Indian signs, and began to despair of finding any, when one morning, just as we were preparing for breakfast, I heard several shots fired, apparently four or five miles up the creek. ”

“ Left our camping ground early and travelled up the creek about five miles, then crossed and passed over another dividing ridge to another small creek—came in sight of the Great Salt Lake road. Had plenty of grass and water—camped at night on a small brook in a basin in the mountains, surrounded by high granite peaks standing about in the greatest confusion, called the Steeple Rocks. They are quite a curiosity at a distance, looking like steeples rising up from the plains, some of them many hundred feet high, and covering more than an acre or two at the base.—The road has been good. ”

“ Sturt Creek and "Gregory's Salt See" The Sturt Creek presents many points of interest. It rises in the Northern Territory, runs for nearly three hundred miles in a South-Westerly direction, and comes to an end in a large salt-lake, across the border, in the desert. It runs throughout its entire length once in every three or four years, though each yearly rainy season floods it in certain parts. In the dry season one might in many places ride right across its course without being aware of it. ”

“ The tree had been partly destroyed by the blacks, but some fine young saplings are springing up, straight and tall again, and the old tree promises to be soon as good as ever. I think it is only an act of justice to these poor creatures to record their peaceable and friendly behaviour to us all the way we travelled, and we hope that as soon as the Salt Creek country is occupied, which from its fine grazing capabilities it immediately will be, a thoughtful and liberal Government will send a supply of useful things to them—as blankets, tomahawks, &c. ”

“ Near the summit of the pass the land is well lined with white sage, which may be used as fodder, and a dwarf cedar adorns the hills. The ground gives out a hollow sound, and the existence of a spring in the vicinity is suspected. Descending the western water-shed, we sighted, in Deep-Creek Valley, St. Mary's County, the first patch of cultivation since leaving Great Salt Lake. The Indian name is Aybá-pá, or the Clay-colored Water; pity that America and Australia have not always preserved the native local terms. It is bisected by a rivulet in which three streamlets from the southern hills unite ”

“ As I had frequently observed that in the dry channels of creeks traversing very level country a heavy shower in the lower part of its course often causes a strong current of water to rush up the stream-bed and leave flood marks, which would mislead a person examining them in the dry season, it seemed probable that this must be the case with the creek entering the salt lake at its south-west angle, as it might be the outlet of the lake when filled by Sturt's Creek flowing into it, though in ordinary seasons the flow of water would be into the lake ”

“ That day the men waded the Salt River (near the present site of Alpine) having spent 7 days in the gloomy depths of the “Mad River Canyon.”
On December 16, they were moving at the break of day in bitterly cold weather, and about noon reached an ice bound creek which showed signs of placer washings. They assumed, correctly as it developed, that the settlements described by Pierce were on this tributary stream. Due to crusted snow they could make only about 1 mile an hour, but upon reaching the creek they walked on the ice, and were thus able to make better progress. ”

“ The scouts and hunters whom we always kept out, report that they have seen fresh tracks of Indians. The next morning we left our camp, which was on the south side, opposite to a large island in the middle of the river, and at five miles reached a creek on the north side, of about twenty yards wide, called Split Rock creek, from a fissure in the point of a neighbouring rock. Three miles beyond this, on the south is Saline river, it is about thirty yards wide, and has its name from the number of salt licks, and springs, which render its water brackish ”

“ The other rivers of' the inland slope are the Barcoo and Thomson, forming Cooper's Creek, the Diamentina, the Burke and the Hamilton, the Herbert or Georgina, and Eyre Creek, all these end in the flats and shallows of the Great Salt Lake District.
The remaining watercourses to the westward cannot be classed in any way, their course is apparently determined by local inequalities of the surface, and although some are very considerable in appearance, their flow is so brief that it is impossible to consider them as at all forming parts of one system ”

“ The top is a narrow crest, suddenly forming an acute based upon an obtuse angle.
From that eyrie, 8000 feet above sea level, the weary pilgrim first sights his shrine, the object of his long wanderings, hardships, and perils, the Happy Valley of the Great Salt Lake. The western horizon, when visible, is bounded by a broken wall of light blue mountain, the Oquirrh, whose northernmost bluff buttresses the southern end of the lake, and whose eastern flank sinks in steps and terraces into a river basin, yellow with the sunlit golden corn, and somewhat pink with its carpeting of heath-like moss. ”

“ The soil is black and loamy, the foothills green and studded with blooming farms and homesteads, the lowlands lush with long grass and willow thickets. Westward, the scene might be a replica of, say, the coast of North Carolina, for now the Great Salt Lake is in full view, and the mist which hides the mountainous islands and western shore, leaves its expanse as limitless as that of the open ocean, whence no salter breeze could blow than this morning air. ”

“ The corporate limits aggregate about fifty square miles; no city in the world, perhaps, possesses streets of such an extraordinary width. Through their whole vast length the magnificent trees which fringe them are irrigated by streams of pure water flowing from the several cañons in the vicinity. By this constant passage of these mountain streams, the air is deliciously cooled, and Salt Lake City made one of the most beautiful and charming places on the North American continent. ”

“ Since the building of these roads, it is calculated that the rain belt moves westward at the rate of eight miles a year. It has now certainly reached the plains of Colorado, and for two years that high and dry state has raised crops without irrigation, right up to the foot of the mountains.
Salt Lake since 1852 has risen nineteen feet, submerging whole farms along its border and threatening the level desert west of it. It has been a gradual but permanent rise, and comes from the additional moisture falling during the year—rain and snow. ”

“ The lands immediately about the lake are flat, rising almost imperceptibly to the base of abrupt hills, which are broken in places by soft and sandy barriers, irreclaimable for agriculture, but here and there fit for grazing; where springs exist, they burst out at too low a level for irrigation. The meridional range of the Oquirrh, at whose northern point we were standing, divides the Great Salt Lake Valley from its western neighbor Tooele or Tuilla, which in sound curiously resembles the Arabic Tawíleh—the Long Valley. ”

“ The road leads alongside of it, crossing it some twenty times. We traveled on till three o'clock when we struck the foot of a mountain three miles this side of town and encamped for the night.
The Salt Lake Valley is built by high mountains whose summits reach into the clouds, forming with its craggy sides a picturesque and, joined with the beauty of the valley, a lovely scene. The valley is thirty miles wide and some seventy-five to one hundred miles long. Within its mountainous enclosure it contains some of the most fertile and beautiful country ever looked on by men. ”

“ Nothing of any great interest occurred on this march, until one day, while proceeding up Prairie Dog Creek, Major North and myself went out in advance of the command several miles and killed a number of buffaloes. ”

“ To Jim Bridger, the famous mountaineer and scout, must be accorded the honour of having been the first white man to look upon its brackish waters. He discovered it in the winter of 1824-25, accidentally, in deciding a bet. The story of this visit to the Great Salt Lake comes down to us by the most reliable testimony. It appears that a party of trappers, under the command of William H. Ashley, one day found themselves on Bear River, in what is known as Willow Valley, and while lying in camp a discussion arose in relation to the probable course of the river. ”

“ Most of the Lower reaches from two to three hundred feet—quite as elevated as Essex or Leicester. The few spots below sea-level consist of the beds of ancient lakes, now much shrunk by evaporation, owing to the present rainless condition of the country; the soil around these is deep in gypsum, and the water itself is considerably salter than the sea. That, however, is always the case with freshwater lakes in their last dotage, as American geologists have amply proved in the case of the Great Salt Lake of Utah. ”

“ From the days of John Smith, the Hol!and pilgrims, or the heroic La Salle, the lot of all pioneers who have preceded the westward course of empire has been, in many features, grievous to be borne. But, aside from the struggles, toils, and experiments of its founders, Salt Lake is, in many important features, a city entirely unique in the history of our colonization. It is a city founded and built from an adherence to a peculiar religious idea, and it owes whatever measure of prosperity it possesses to the iron will and dogged persistency of a single man. ”

“ Good climbers can make a side trip from near the Mammoth Hot Springs to the top of Quadrant Mountain, the remnant of a “biscuit cut” upland (372) , and there study the nivation process (368, Yellowstone National Park Folio, U. S. G. S.) .
The trip from the Park to Salt Lake City, over the Union Pacific Railway, passes through the Red Rock Pass, the former outlet of Lake Bonneville (423) , into the desert of the Great Basin ( Chaps. XV and XVI) . Great Salt Lake is a saline lake or sink with an interesting record of climatic changes (198, 401) . ”

“ Bear River rises in the Uintah Mountains of northeastern Utah, and flows north and slightly northwest along the borders of Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho; until in Idaho, it takes a sudden bend southwest and south, and after a course of more than a hundred miles, enters Great Salt Lake. The trail struck this river near the southeastern corner of Idaho, following its course northwest to its bend—almost the identical route of the present Oregon Short Line railway.
Great Salt Lake had probably been seen by white men before the explorations of Ashley's party ”

“ This is, perhaps, the most rugged, desert, and dreary country, between the Western borders of the United States, and the shores of the Pacific. It is nothing else, than a wild, rocky, barren wilderness, of wrecked and ruined Nature; a vast field of volcanic desolation. Beyond the Mountains, which rise on the South of this point, is the great Salt Lake. Eighty-eight miles below the crossing of Snake River, we crossed two small branches of hot water. ”

“ Part of it is included under the vague designation of 'the Great American Desert;' but that title is applicable to a far larger area westward than eastward of the Rocky Mountains. The Great Basin, whereof Salt Lake is the lowest point, and the Valley of the Colorado, which skirts it on the east, are mainly sterile from drouth or other causes—not one acre in each hundred of their surface being arable without irrigation, and not one in ten capable of being made productive by irrigation. ”

“ In Nevada, at the sink of the Carson River, is an area of five square miles which was once the bed of a salt lake. The famous Great Salt Lake, between the Wahsatch Mountains and the Nevadas in America, is the remains of a large inland sea which once covered the district, and should the climate become drier than it is now, the shrinkage, which went on for ages, will be resumed, and a huge salt deposit will be formed. ”