Category: Geology

Posted on

Salty Connections

Salty Connections: Drying Beds Surrounding the Great Salt Lake, Fall 2016, Courtesy NASA Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center
Drying Beds Surrounding the Great Salt Lake
Fall 2016
Courtesy NASA Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center

The Great Salt Lake Courtesy Pixabay https://pixabay.com/photos/utah-great-salt-lake-water-95570/ The Great Salt Lake
Courtesy Pixabay
https://pixabay.com/photos/utah-great-salt-lake-water-95570/

Salt with a Wooden Spoon, Courtesy Pixabay Salt with a Wooden Spoon, Courtesy Pixabay

Sevier Lake, a Saline Lake in Central UtahSevier Lake
Courtesy & Copyright 2013
Holly Strand, Photographer

Kyle Bosshardt Explains the Origins of the Redmond Minerals Mine June 2018 Courtesy & © Lyle Bingham Kyle Bosshardt Explains the Origins of the Redmond Minerals Mine
June 2018
Courtesy & © Lyle Bingham

Kyle Bosshardt Explains Redmond Salt Mineral Composition to a Tour June 2013 Courtesy & © Lyle Bingham Kyle Bosshardt Explains Redmond Salt Mineral Composition to a Tour
June 2013
Courtesy & © Lyle Bingham

Here in Utah, early explorers and native peoples knew of saline deposits, springs and lakes long before the pioneers arrived in 1847. For example, more than 1300 years ago,
the Fremont traded salt, found near Redmond, Utah, to the cliff-dwelling Anasazi of Mesa Verde. Necessary for life, salt is found across the State of Utah, where it is harvested, mined, processed and traded worldwide for various applications.

In a geologic recycling story that crosses many epochs, different salt compounds are often mixed and then move in water or under pressure. Normal table salt, the mineral halite, is chemically described as sodium chloride. Often found together in different concentrations are the bitter salts of potassium and magnesium. All these salts leach from rocks and soil, then wash downstream to oceans and land-locked lakes, such as Sevier Lake and the Great Salt Lake. In many cases, an ancient inland sea or lake deposited a layer of salt followed by layers of clay, sediment or lava. Then geologic forces uplifted the layers to repeat the cycle and make the salt accessible.

Lehi Hintze, in Utah’s Spectacular Geology, wrote, “Rock salt has two characteristics that promote upward movement. First, it is soft and flows plastically like ice does in a glacier. Second, it is less dense than other rocks and tends to migrate upward through the denser surrounding rocks….”

When the pioneers moved to Utah, salt rendering became one of the first industries established for external trade. They boiled Great Salt Lake water over wood fires until only salt remained. However, this lake salt tasted bitter due to impurities in the water. Fortunately, it could be sold to mines in Montana where salt was used to refine silver. Today, salt from the Great Salt Lake continues to be harvested mostly for industrial purposes including metal extraction, water softening and road de-icing.

For early salt entrepreneurs, boiling proved expensive. In time, the sun was put to work and evaporation ponds were built on the shores of the lake. At first the ponds filled when the wind blew, sometimes resulting in wall collapses. These failures led to better walls and brine pumps to repeatedly fill the ponds. Anyone flying west from Salt Lake City has seen these multicolored drying beds. Harvested mountains of dried salt, seen at the Morton and Cargill sites when driving I-80 towards Nevada, are loaded on trucks and rail cars for nationwide distribution.

More recently developed, is the salt mine west of Redmond, Utah, near Salina. The Redmond salt deposit predates the Great Salt Lake, which came from the drying of Lake Bonneville. Redmond Minerals is mining the first 800 feet of a 5000-foot diapir, an extruded mound forced up from salt beds deposited by the Jurassic Sundance Sea. In digging more than 18 miles of tunnels, Redmond has identified several grades of salt. Their culinary salt is sold worldwide as Real Salt, but the majority of their production is for agriculture, animal health and de-icing.

Salt production in Utah is possible because of the geologic and historic past. Just as the Fremont gathered and traded salt anciently, modern methods of harvesting and mining allow companies to distribute products worldwide. As such, salt continues to contribute to Utah’s role as the Crossroads of the West.

This is Lyle Bingham and I’m Wild About Utah and its 15 years on Utah Public Radio.

Credits:
Photos: Great Salt Lake Photos Courtesy NASA Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center
Great Salt Lake and Salt with a Wooden Spoon, Photos Courtesy Pixabay
Redmond Photos Courtesy & Copyright Lyle Bingham, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy & © Kevin Colver, https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections
Text: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Lyle Bingham’s Wild About Utah Postings

Strand, Holly, Utah is Worth its Salt, Wild About Utah, November 21, 2013, https://wildaboututah.org/utah-is-worth-its-salt/

The Great Salt Lake, Hassibe, W.R. & Keck, W.G., USGS, US Department of the Interior, https://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/70039229/report.pdf

Cabrero, Alex, Redmond salt mine supplies Utah’s roads and chef’s kitchens, KSL TV, December 18, 2022, https://www.ksl.com/article/50540322/redmond-salt-mine-supplies-utahs-roads-and-chefs-kitchens

The Mineral Industry of Utah, National Minerals Information Center, USGS, US Department of the Interior, https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-center/mineral-industry-utah

Salt Providers in Utah:

Other Salt-related mineral extractors in Utah:

Above lists may not be complete. Please send recommendations to wildaboututah@gmail.com

The Great Salt Lake, Utah Division of Water Resources, Utah Department of Natural Resources, https://water.utah.gov/great-salt-lake/

Great Salt Lake Plans, Utah Division of Forestry, Fire & State Lands, Utah Department of Natural Resources, https://ffsl.utah.gov/state-lands/great-salt-lake/great-salt-lake-plans/

Clark, John L., History of Utah’s Salt Industry 1847-1970, August 1971, Thesis, BYU Dept of History, https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=5602&context=etd

Coloring the Great Salt Lake, The Earth Observatory, EOS Project Science Office, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/147355/coloring-the-great-salt-lake

Hintze, Lehi F, Utah’s Spectacular Geology and How It Came to Be, Department of Geology, Brigham Young University, 2005, https://archive.org/details/utahsspectacular0000hint/mode/2up

Follow-up:
Winslow, Ben, Compass Minerals to abandon lithium extraction on Great Salt Lake, Great Salt Lake Collaborative, Fox13, Scripps Media, Inc, https://www.fox13now.com/news/great-salt-lake-collaborative/compass-minerals-to-abandon-lithium-extraction-on-great-salt-lake

Posted on

Find the Story

Percy the Utahraptor by Justin Tolman, USU Museum of Geology, https://www.usu.edu/geo/info/geology-museum/ Courtesy & © Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
Percy the Utahraptor
by Justin Tolman
USU Museum of Geology
Courtesy & © Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

Fossil Point in the San Rafael desert near Green River, Utah, Courtesy & © Shannon Rhodes, Photographer Fossil Point in the San Rafael desert near Green River, Utah
https://www.blm.gov/visit/fossil-point-trailhead
Courtesy & © Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

In their picture book “Everywhere, Wonder,” Matthew Swanson and Robbi Behr challenge readers to find a story in places and phenomena both ordinary and extraordinary. Black ants marching in a line have a story just as interesting as red-rock canyons and a footprint on the moon. Sunlight patterns through a window are just as beautiful as Brazilian jungles and wildebeests in Kenyan savannas. They remind us to keep our eyes open and weave the stories of our noticings. As I wander among Utah’s wild wonders, it’s easy.

This spring I realized the fun of finding my wonder story as I stumbled upon the sign for Fossil Point in the San Rafael desert near Green River, Utah. The odds were pretty good, I suspected, that I could find fossils there, but I didn’t know exactly what I was hunting. My eyes are always drawn to the fact-filled stories on interpretive signage, even if I’ve read them before, but at this spot all I knew was the title. No kiosks with hint-filled maps and tips for discovery or guardrail paths making it obvious where to walk. Just a pile of boulders.

Although I wouldn’t consider myself a dino-fanatic, I have been a frequent visitor throughout my life at the Dinosaur National Monument and other Utah fossil museums as well as more dinosaur trackways and quarries not housed in buildings. I’ve read hundreds of dino readers and scanned even more dinosaur books, but here I was without many clues to what I might find. Resisting the urge to look up internet hints, I started up the Fossil Point slope. Was it trilobites the size of dimes and quarters or prehistoric swamp ferns? I will not reveal what I found at Fossil Point so that you can discover the wonder yourself, but it motivated me to catch up on Utah’s contribution to the more than one hundred characters in the dinosaur story, as depicted beautifully in the Dinosaurs of Utah tools at the Utah Geological Survey website.

So many students I’ve met have been fascinated by the T-rex and Utah state fossil Allosaurus, and they know all sorts of theories about how the Utahraptor, our state dinosaur since 2018, might have had feathers and hunted in packs. Fossils provide hints to the size and shape of prehistoric life, but they leave a lot of the colors and textures to the imagination. Tucked in the back corner of the Geology Museum at Utah State University I found another story, this one titled “Percy.” While the stories of Percy’s relatives are preserved in the nine-ton Utahraptor Megablock extracted from the area that is emerging as Utahraptor State Park, this story took sculptor Justin Tolman an astounding 350 hours to create. This incredible replica sports colors resembling my grandbabies’ Easter egg-dying hands as they toddled along the base of Fossil Point with me hunting evidence of a Mesozoic story. It is a story I’m glad I found
almost all on my own.

For Wild About Utah, I am Shannon Rhodes.

Credits:

Images: Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
Audio: Courtesy & © Friend Weller, https://upr.org/
Text:     Shannon Rhodes, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University https://edithbowen.usu.edu/
Additional Reading Links: Shannon Rhodes

Additional Reading:

Wild About Utah Pieces by Shannon Rhodes, https://wildaboututah.org/author/shannon-rhodes/

Bureau of Land Management, Fossil Point trailhead, https://www.blm.gov/visit/fossil-point-trailhead

Rodgers, Bethany, Governor Spencer Cox signs bill to create Utahraptor State Park near Moab. 2021. The Salt Lake Tribune. https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2021/03/17/gov-spencer-cox-signs/

Sidwell, Owen. University student sculpts Utahraptor for USU Geology Museum. 2018. Utah Public Radio. https://www.upr.org/arts-and-culture/2018-04-12/university-student-sculpts-utahraptor-for-usu-geology-museum

Swanson, Matthew. Everywhere, Wonder. 2017. Imprint: New York. https://robbiandmatthew.com/everywhere-wonder/

USU Museum of Geology, Come meet Percy the Raptor, https://www.usu.edu/geo/info/geology-museum

Popular Geology: Dinosaurs and Fossils, Utah Geological Survey. https://geology.utah.gov/popular/dinosaurs-fossils/#:~:text=Utah%20also%20contains%20abundant%20fossils,of%20millions%20of%20years%20ago.

Posted on

Erosion Made My Favorite Places

Erosion Made My Favorite Places: Bluff of Little Flat Top Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer
Bluff of Little Flat Top
Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer

Muddy Creek Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer Muddy Creek
Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer

North Fork Pleasant Creek Terracing Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer North Fork Pleasant Creek Terracing
Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer

Blackburn Draw Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer Blackburn Draw
Courtesy and Copyright Shannon Rhodes, photographer

Brendan Wenzel says the inspiration for his picture book “A Stone Sat Still” was a familiar boulder nestled in a tidal inlet near his family’s home. This stone was a dining place, a perch, a tool, and a landmark, but dependably there day after day, year after year. When I shared this book as a writing workshop launch with fellow educators, it drew recollections of sandboxes, rock collections, garden pavers, mantle stones, stacked-stone cairns keeping us on the right trail, and deeper connections to fathers. I wrote about how stones definitely don’t sit still when I am around. When my father would take us fishing, my brothers and I would most likely be skipping every flat rock we could find across the lake’s surface instead of manning our poles. Even now I can’t resist rolling a moqui marble down desert slickrock or plucking up a river rock to chase scurrying stonefly larva beneath.

Dr. Eric Newell, director of experiential learning at Edith Bowen Laboratory School and summertime river rafting guide, wrote about the secrets stones hold for him: “I like to pick up rounded river rocks, turn them gently in my fingertips, feel the smooth contours, and wonder where they journeyed from to this resting place—how long did it take for the eons to shape and polish them? And what would rivers be without stones?—the meticulous ways the currents stack and sort boulders to sand grains by size, coming to understand that every wave on the surface of the river is created by stones beneath—and the metaphor that provides for seeing and understanding children, adults, and even myself.”

Mountains, boulders, stones, cobbles, gravels, pebbles, sand grains, silt, mud. If the water is muddy or the wind is dusty, we know erosion is happening. It forms valleys, smooths jagged rocks, and carves unexpected slot canyons in the desert. It also causes black blizzards and landslides. According to Mark Milligan of the Utah Geologic Survey, the early decades of the 1900s saw the Civilian Conservation Corps setting to work not only building canals and roads, but contour terracing to stall mountainside erosion here in Utah. There is a sign on Skyline Drive in the Manti-LaSal National Forest that reminds us that those CCC boys were digging horizontal trenches above our cities well into the 1950s.

Many people equate erosion with the destructive forces that wear down earth. Yet, in her book titled “Erosion,” Terry Tempest Williams pairs eroding with evolving. She wrote, “Water freezes and shatters stone; rocks fall from the force of gravity; new rapids appear in rivers. Storms gather and floods roar through dry washes, cutting and scouring a wider channel…” We have water, ice, wind, and time to thank for the erosion that created Natural Bridges and Arches, Coral Pink Sand Dunes and Goblin Valley, and Muddy Creek and Blackburn Draw.

I’m Shannon Rhodes, and I’m wild about erosion’s role in shaping Utah.

Credits:

Images: Courtesy & Copyright © Shannon Rhodes, Photographer
Audio: Courtesy & © Friend Weller, https://upr.org/
Text:     Shannon Rhodes, Edith Bowen Laboratory School, Utah State University https://edithbowen.usu.edu/
Additional Reading Links: Courtesy Shannon Rhodes

Additional Reading:

Atwood, Genevieve. Geology of Utah. https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/g/GEOLOGY.shtml

Manti-LaSal National Forest Visitor Guide. https://www.fs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/stelprdb5370798.pdf

Milligan, Mark. What Are Those Lines on the Mountain? From Bread Lines to Erosion-Control Lines. Utah Geologic Survey Notes, v. 42 no. 1, January 2010. https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/glad-you-asked/erosion-control-lines-on-the-mountains/

Olsen, Beth. Utah’s CCCs: The Conservators’ Medium for Young Men, Nature, Economy, and Freedom. Utah Historical Quarterly, Volume 62, Number 3, 1994 by Utah State History. https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume62_1994_number3/s/163708

Oskin, Becky. Mars on Earth: How Utah’s Fantastical Moqui Marbles Formed. 2014. https://www.livescience.com/47936-how-moqui-marbles-form.html


Wenzel, Brendan. A Stone Sat Still. 2019. San Francisco, CA: Chronicle Books. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P11LB4A-pjI

Williams, Terry Tempest. Erosion: Essays of Undoing. 2019. New York, NY: Sarah Crichton Books. https://www.amazon.com/Erosion-Undoing-Terry-Tempest-Williams/dp/0374280061

Posted on

Mirabilite Mounds and The Great Salt Lake

Mirabilite Mounds in the Great Salt Lake Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
Mirabilite Mounds
in the Great Salt Lake
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
Back in October 2019, the ranger at the Great Salt Lake State Park began to notice a white mound forming on the sand flats behind the visitor center. The white mounds turned out to be hydrated sodium sulfate – known as mirabilite- which was being carried to the surface by the upwelling of a fresh water spring. Since the 1940’s geologists have known that in this area, 30 inches below the surface, there was a 3 – 6 foot thick shelf of mirabilite. They knew about the fresh water springs What was new was cold air. Since this stretch of sand was no longer underwater, the mirabilite carried to the surface stayed there as crystals, piling up on each other, puddling and spreading out. One mound rose to the height of 3 feet.

Mirabilite Springs in the shadow of the Kennecott Smelter stack Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Phorographer
Mirabilite Springs in the shadow of the Kennecott Smelter stack
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Phorographer
When the mounds started to form again this winter, I jumped at the chance to to go and take a look. I must admit at first I was a little underwhelmed at the size, perhaps because the Kennecott Smelter Stack nearby dominates the view, rising to 1,215 feet – roughly the same height as the Empire State Building. But the park ranger got my attention when she told us that mirabilite mounds have only been seen in four places in the entire world – the Canadian Arctic, Antarctica, Central Spain, – and Utah. Just seeing them turns out to be a rare winter treat. When the air warms to 50 degrees, the mirabilite will crumble into a fine white powder and disappear.

Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty (1970) Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty (1970)
Courtesy & © Mary Heers, Photographer
My mind flashed back to a trip I’d made to the other end of the lake ten years ago. I’d just graduated from the docent training class at the Utah Museum of Fine Art, and a friend and I wanted to celebrate by having High Tea at the center of the Spiral Jetty, a 1,500 foot, long, 15 foot wide coil of black basalt rock – a stunning example of land art jutting out from the northern shore. We’d been warned that it might be underwater, but when we arrived we were delighted to find we could easily walk to the very center of the spiral as the lake water gently lapped at the edges of our shoes. We clinked our tea cups, and toasted the greatness of the lake.

Suddenly I wanted to see the jetty again, so I hopped in my car and drove to the remote site. I saw the Spiral Jetty was now high and dry. Drifting sand had already started to bury parts of it. The water’s edge was now over 300 yards away. I thought of the millions of migratory birds that would be arriving in the spring to rest and feast on the tiny treasures of the lake, the brine shrimp. I hoped a smaller lake would still be enough for all of them.

The recent words of the director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake, Lynn de Freitas, rang in my head: “The Great Salt Lake is a gift that keeps on giving. Just add water.”

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah.

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers, Photographer
Featured Audio: Courtesy and Copyright Kevin Colver https://wildstore.wildsanctuary.com/collections/special-collections/kevin-colver
Text & Voice: Mary Heers, Generous Contributor, Utah Public Radio
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, Webmaster Bridgerland Audubon Society

Additional Reading

Mirabilite Spring Mounds Near Great Salt Lake Marina, Utah Geological Survey (UGS), Utah Department of Natural Resources, https://geology.utah.gov/popular/general-geology/great-salt-lake/mirabilite-spring-mounds/

Mirabilite, Mindat.org, Hudson Institute of Mineralogy, https://www.mindat.org/min-2725.html

Tabin, Sara, Rare salt formations return to Great Salt Lake’s shores; take a tour while they last, The Salt Lake Tribune, Jan. 13, 2021, https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/01/14/rare-salt-formations/

USGS 412613112400801 The Great Salt Lake at Spiral Jetty, Site Map for the Nation, U.S. Geological Survey(USGS), U.S. Department of the Interior, https://waterdata.usgs.gov/nwis/nwismap/?site_no=412613112400801&agency_cd=USGS

Case, William, GEOSIGHTS: PINK WATER, WHITE SALT CRYSTALS, BLACK BOULDERS, AND THE RETURN OF SPIRAL JETTY!, Survey Notes, v. 35 no. 1, Utah Geological Survey (UGS), Utah Department of Natural Resources, January 2003, https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/geosights/spiral-jetty/

Board & Staff, Friends of the Great Salt Lake, https://www.fogsl.org/about/board-staff

Salt Lake Brine Shrimp, https://saltlakebrineshrimp.com/harvest/