Wasatch Range

“ In the House Range section, 105 miles north-northeast of Pioche, the formation is 125 feet thick. In the Big Cottonwood section of the Wasatch range, about 125 miles northeast of the House Range, near the old shore line, the Pioche formation is represented by the lower portion of the arenaceous shales which are here 250 feet in thickness. The Pioche formation horizon is next met with to the north where the line of the Canadian Pacific railroad crosses the Continental Divide. At this place the formation is called the Mount Whyte formation. ”

“ The truth is, the Rocky Mountains, many of them, need a certain distance to make them either picturesque or dignified. The range then daily before our eyes, the Wasatch, was, to dwellers at its feet, bleak, monotonous, and hopelessly prosaic. The lowest foothills, being near, hid the taller peaks, as a penny before the eye will hide a whole landscape. ”

“ But as the slopes at the foot of the mountains seemed capable of producing food for their support, they stopped and made their homes there. Now in this same region, after half a century, one can ride for many miles through as beautiful and highly cultivated a country as the sun ever looked down upon. In the early days the barren plains were broken only by mountains almost as barren, which rose from them like the islands from the surface of the Great Salt Lake. The only pleasing prospect was toward the east, where stood the steep and rugged Wasatch Range, with its snow-capped peaks. ”

“ The Wasatch range is now plainly visible, coasting the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake, and winding around to the southwest until they enclose a valley that by Mormon industry has been converted into a veritable paradise, ramified as it is by canals that render it prolific with nearly everything that fertile soil can produce. ”

“ We might almost say that they are growing to-day. In this region, then, we can actually see how mountains are made; we do not have to depend upon descriptions of the manner in which they are supposed to have been made thousands of years ago.
FIG. 22.—BLUFF FORMED BY AN EARTHQUAKE At the foot of the Wasatch Range, Utah
Any good map will show that the mountains of the Cordilleran region have in general a north and south direction. Their direction was determined by fissures formed long ago in the crust of the earth. ”

“ The valley, sometimes called the Great Basin, has an elevation of from four to five thousand feet, being surrounded and intersected by mountain ranges, which rise from five to seven thousand feet above the level of the basin. The Wasatch range extends along the east side of the valley; at its western base is a narrow strip of land, the most fruitful in the Territory. In many other parts the soil is alkaline and sterile. In other districts there are fertile basins, with soil of good quality, yielding in places from fifty to ninety bushels of grain to the acre. ”

“ In this year a number of gentlemen made up a party and started for the far West. During that fearful journey they were lost for three months in the "Great American Desert," the region marked on the map as the "unexplored region." General Fremont, with all the patronage of the Government at his command, tried to cross this desert at several points, but failed in every attempt. This desert is bounded by the Rocky Mountains and Wasatch range on the east and the Sierra Nevada on the west. ”

“ From the range of mountains which begin a little westward of Fort Laramie, to the farther side of the Wasatch Mountains, the elevation of the soil is uninterruptedly maintained from 5,000 to upwards of 7,000 feet above the sea level ”

“ Oquirrh, Tintic, Beaver, House and Mineral Mountains are typical examples of these north-south “basin ranges,” which rise abruptly from the desert plains and are themselves partial deserts. The Wasatch Mountain range constitutes the eastern margin of the Great Basin in central and northern Utah, and resembles the true basin ranges in that it is formed by a great block of the earth's crust uptilted along a north-south fault-line. Its steep fault scarp faces west, and rises from 4000 to 6000 ft. above the basin floor ”

“ The Wasatch system of mountains is composed of abrupt ranges crowned with sharp peaks. The several minor ranges and groups of peaks into which it is broken are separated only in part by structural differences, since ridges with homogeneous structure are severed by transverse valleys. The drainage of the whole area occupied by the Wasatch Mountains is westward to the Great Salt Lake. ”

“ At the western base of the Wasatch are Salt Lake City, Ogden, Provo and other smaller towns, situated where streams issue from the mountains, soon to disappear on the desert plains. In such places agriculture is made possible by irrigation, and the Mormon villages, both here and farther south along the base of the Hurricane Ledge, depend largely on this industry. Important mining operations are carried on in the Wasatch Mountains and in a number of the basin ranges. ”

“ Where streams entered the lake tongues of deltaic deposits, sands or mudstones wedge into the Green River Lake sediments.
The reason for the red color of the Wasatch Formation is not fully known. According to Van Houten (1948) , the red is most likely the result of tropical, red lateritic soils forming in the uplands and being deposited on flood plains. The oxidation of organic material in a humid, subtropical environment causes the red color. The bands of purple, gray, orange, and other colors are due to various stages in the reduction of the iron oxides in the rocks. ”

“ The Green River Formation is easily recognized by its light color and continuous bedding, in strong contrast to the red, discontinuous, variegated Wasatch Formation below. The Green River Formation can be thought of as a gigantic lens of lacustrine sediments enclosed in the fluvial Wasatch Formation. The name Green River Formation is applied to all of the roughly contemporaneous deposits laid down in lakes of Utah, Colorado, and Wyoming. ”

“ Possibly, there was a Wasatch ancestor, which only awaits discovery, but it seems more likely that these earliest known genera were belated immigrants from the same as yet unknown region, whence came the modernized and progressive elements of the Wasatch fauna. Except for its obscure beginning, the family was pre-eminently characteristic of North America, and only two representatives of it have been found outside of that continent, one in Hungary and one in Bulgaria. No doubt others will yet be found in Asia. ”

“ The great mass of the Rocky mountain system is W. of the 105th meridian. Its two main chains are the Rocky mountains proper, extending through New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana, and the Sierra Nevada in California, with its extension, the Cascade range, in Oregon and Washington territory. Between these two chains is a plateau, crossed by numerous mountain ranges, which through its centre E. and W. is from 4,000 to 5,000 ft. high, falling off toward the north and south from that line. The Wahsatch mountains are the most important range of the plateau. ”

“ Cantine and Blera were traveling almost due westward. On their left to the south lay Haeckel Hill. On their right to the north loomed the Miner’s Range, and on the far horizon beyond the valley of the tributary Klokhok jutted higher, nameless peaks. In interminable vastness the land spread before them, virgin ground oft from the main-traveled trail to Dawson City, and the stupendous extent of it was enough to strike fear into the human heart. ”

“ Throughout the vast region bounded on the east by the Wahsatch Mountains and on the west by the Sierra there are more than a hundred subordinate ranges and mountain groups, trending north and south, range beyond range, with summits rising from eight to twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea, probably all of which, according to my own observations, is, or has been, inhabited by this species. ”

“ The great peculiarity and remarkable beauty of Lake Wakitipu lies in the precipitous mountains that descend sheer into the lake in one straight line, varying from 3000 to 9000 feet. There are no undulating slopes or breaks in the range; no peeps of the country outside the mountains, which rise up as a fixed and impassable barrier, shutting us in whichever side we turn—making us unconsciously long for a glimpse of the outer world.
The captain of the Mountaineer told me that it is believed (from soundings) that the formation of the bed of the lake assumes the same shape as the mountains above ”

“ Uintah range.Directly west of North Park, and separated from it by the mass of the Park range, and also by a broad belt of high mesa country, is the Uintah range, remarkable as having an east and west trend, and thus forming a sort of connecting link between the eastern edge of the Rocky Mountain system and its western border, of which the Wahsatch range is the most strongly marked division. ”

“ Some of the simplest and youngest mountain ridges in the world are to be found in the broken and tilted lava blocks of southern Oregon. Tilted blocks on a larger scale, much more affected by processes of sculpture, are found in the lofty St Elias Alps of Alaska, the site of some of the greatest glaciers in the world. The wall of a huge fracture, now elaborately carved, constitutes the western slope of the Wahsatch range, facing the desert basin of Utah. ”

“ From the summit of the Wasach range to the eastern foot of the Sierra Nevada, the whole region, with exceptions, is a howling wilderness, the sole or bed of an inland sweetwater sea, now shrunk into its remnants—the Great Salt and the Utah Lakes. Nothing can be more monotonous than its regular succession of high grisly hills, cut perpendicularly by rough and rocky ravines, and separating bare and barren plains. From the seaward base of the Sierra Nevada to the Pacific—California—the slope is easy, and the land is pleasant, fertile, and populous. ”

“ The unspecialized populations conceivably occupied an area west of the present Rocky Mountains and south of latitude 50°. From later Miocene times on, climatic and geological differentiation occurred in this area, and with the growth of geological barriers and differentiation of habitat these unspecialized populations may have been separated into two ecological groups, one inhabiting the more arid area between the present Rocky Mountains and the present Cascade Range and Sierra Nevada and the other group inhabiting the Pacific coastal region. ”

“ Area estimated at 106,500 square miles, or 68,160,000 acres. Population, 120,000.
Mountains.—This territory is traversed from north to south by the great continental chain of the Rocky Mountains, and according to its orographical configuration may be divided into a mountain district, a hill district, and a plain district. The principal range of these mountains bears the name of the Sawatch Range. It consists of a solid mass of granite, has an average elevation of 13,500 feet, presents a broad and massive outline, and has a mean breadth of from fifteen to twenty miles. ”

“ The profound erosion implied by the development, first of a mature topography across this great Cordillera, and second of many deep canyons, calls for deposition on an equally great scale on the mountain borders. The deposits of the western border are a mile thick, but they are confined to a narrow zone between the Coast Range and the Cordillera. Whatever material is swept beyond the immediate coast is deposited in deep ocean water, for the bottom falls off rapidly. The deposits of the eastern border of the Andes are carried far out over the Amazon lowland. ”

“ The sub-divisions of the Nearctic region, although pretty clearly indicated by physical features and peculiarities of climate and vegetation, are by no means so strongly marked out in their zoology as we might expect. The same genera, as a rule, extend over the whole region; while the species of the several sub-regions are in most cases different. Even the vast range of the Rocky Mountains has not been an effectual barrier against this wide dispersal of the same forms of life ”

“ Quitting the range, which had been named after one of the most liberal promoters of the expedition, Hamersley Range, we took a north-east course, crossing over twelve or fourteen miles of beautiful open grassy plain, in many parts the kangaroo-grass reaching above the horses' backs; the soil being of the richest clay-loam, occasionally containing beds of singular fragments of opaline rocks, resembling ancient lava. ”

“ From the summit a high tableland [Probably Musgrave Range (Warburton) ] and range can be seen to the North, to the East a bluff-ended tableland, [Probably Philipson Range (Warburton) ] but the horizon from South-East to South-West was a dead level.
One mile due West of the highest point we found a native well in a sandy gutter, and about 150 yards from it, to the East, a high wall of bare rock as regular as if it had been built. This wall, seen edge-on from the North-West, from which point Breaden sighted it when after the camels, appears like a chimney-stack. ”

“ Coming from the northeast, the Blue Range of Oregon, the Cascade Range from the north, and the Sierra from the south, blend into or form a vast steppe or table-land of lava and sagefields, interspersed with a score of lakes, in size varying from five to forty miles in length, and proportionate width. This high separating belt of land and water commences at the Owyhee River and extends westward to the mountains, running at right angles to the ocean—a length of three hundred miles, and an average breadth of one hundred and fifty. ”