Water Archives - Wild About Utah

September 25, 2023September 25, 2023

Naturally Carbonated Water

If you like drinking carbonated water as much as I do, you’ll be happy to hear you can drink as much as you’d like, -absolutely for free- just north of the Utah border in Soda Springs, Idaho.

Idan-Ha Mineral Water, Courtesy & &copy Mary Heers, Photographer — Idan-Ha Mineral Water
Courtesy & &copy Mary Heers, Photographer

Small Bubbling Soda Water Pool
Courtesy & &copy Mary Heers, Photographer

Small Bubbling Soda Water Pool, Courtesy & &copy Mary Heers, Photographer — Idan-Ha Mineral Water
Courtesy & &copy Mary Heers, Photographer

Small Bubbling Soda Water Pool
Courtesy & &copy Mary Heers, Photographer

When settlers heading to California passed through this area on the Oregon Trail, they saw the many bubbling natural springs.

In 1838 Sarah White Smith, wrote in her diary, This is indeed a curiosity. The water is bubbling and foaming like boiling water.” But the water wasn’t hot.

She also wrote how delighted she was when she made bread with the water. “The bread was as light as any prepared with yeast.”

All this stirred up some fond memories I have of my high school science teacher who always made interesting things happen in the classroom. She put a pinch of sodium bicarbonate (commonly called baking soda) in a dish and added a couple tablespoons of water and vinegar. Voila! The dish began “bubbling and foaming like boiling water.”

For centuries something like this has been going on under the ground in Soda Springs. The carbonate rocks are mixing with slightly acidic water, sending CO2 bubbles to the surface .

By 1887, Soda Springs had grown to a bustling town. Some enterprising residents came up with a plan to capture the CO2 gas. They built giant drums over one of the springs and then built a five-mile pipeline to their bottling plant. There they mixed the gas with clear water from another spring and bottled it. The soda water was called “Idan-ha” and was shipped out on the railroad far and wide.

A bottle of Idan-ha mineral water
Mary Heers, Photographer
It won first place at the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893 and again in the World’s Fair in Paris in 1905.

A decade later, another group of businessmen went to work on a plan to build a mineral water swimming pool resort.

On Dec 2, 1937, drillers dug down to 315 ft. No luck. They went to dinner. Then they heard a gush of water shoot up outside the window. They said it was “roaring like a dragon.” The whole area was enveloped in water vapor and Main Street was flooded. It took them two weeks to cap it.

The water wasn’t warm, so the businessmen abandoned their plans for a swimming pool resort.

The town knew their geyser was accidental; it was man-made- but still a plume of water shooting 100 ft into the air was impressive to look at.

Engineers put a timer on the cap. Now the carbonated water shoots up for 8 minutes every hour on the hour.

You can watch it for free.

As for drinking the naturally carbonated water, the city has set aside three springs.

Mineral springs in Soda Springs, Idaho
Mary Heers, Photographer
My guide drove me to his favorite site just outside of town We scrambled down a grassy hillside to a small bubbling pool about the size of a basketball. He whipped out a cup and dipped it in. I drank. It was cold and fizzy.

“Good as Perrier,” I said.

He smiled, “Now I like you.”

I liked him too. Even more, I loved drinking this tasty treasure bubbling up from the ground.

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah

Credits:

Photos:
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Postings

Price, Mike, Soda Springs, We Are East Idaho, EastIdahoNews.com LLC, September 9, 2019, https://www.eastidahonews.com/2019/09/we-are-east-idaho-soda-springs/

Hooper Springs Park, California National Historic Trail, Oregon National Historic Trail, National Park Service, US Department of the Interior, https://www.nps.gov/places/000/hooper-springs-park.htm

A man-made CO2 Geyser in Utah:
Weaver, Lance, Crystal Geyser, Grand County, Utah, Geosights, Utah Geological Survey (UGS), Utah Department of Natural Resources, January 2018, https://geology.utah.gov/map-pub/survey-notes/geosights/crystal-geyser/

Map on page 43 shows water from Soda Springs flows into the Bear River and the Great Salt Lake:
Dissolved-Mineral Inflow to Great Salt Lake and Chemical Characteristics of the Salt Lake Brine, United States Geological Survey (USGS) and The College of Mines and Mineral Industries, The University of Utah, 1963, https://ugspub.nr.utah.gov/publications/open_file_reports/ofr-485/Lake%20Brine%20Interpretive%20Reports/WRB%2003%20-%20Part%201%20-%20Hahl%20&%20Mitchell%20-%201963/Water%20Resources%20Bulletin%203%20Pt%201%201963.pdf

January 23, 2023January 22, 2023

Sliding on Ice can be Fun

Mary and Art Heers ready for bobsledding
Courtesy & Copyright Mary Heers

When cold weather sets into Cache Valley, I usually begin to grumble. But this year, when the weather warmed up and the snow turned to rain, my grumbling got a lot louder.

Everywhere I looked, the sidewalks and roads were covered in ice. I announced that falling on ice was my least favorite activity. I hated ice.

Then I got an unusual Christmas letter from an old family friend, Paulette Campbell. This letter told the story about the skating pond her 3 sons had built for 15 years at their Logan home. The yard was 30 ft wide, 60 ft long, and flat as a pancake – perfect for creating an ice rink. But it took a lot of work. The boys would begin by packing the snow with a heavy roller pulled by their garden tractor. Then they got out the garden hose and sprayed the surface. Three hours later the water had frozen and it was time to spray again. For the next five nights the family pitched in and the ice got sprayed every three hours. The boys packed down the lumpy spots with a shovel.

When the pond was ready, the neighborhood kids flocked to the pond to skate after school. But at 8pm, the floodlights came on and the big kids took over the ice. It was time to play hockey. The boys’ grandparents, who lived next door, pulled their chairs up to the bay window and watched. They insisted on paying the water bill. They insisted the entertainment was worth it.

By the time I finished reading the letter, I had to admit sliding on the ice could be fun.

I was also starting to rerun in my mind my own family ice story. My cousin, Jill Bakken, had been recruited out of high school by the US Olympic committee to give bobsledding a try. Jill took a liking for this slippery sport. In 2002, at the Salt Lake Winter Olympics, Jill and Vonetta Flowers brought home the gold medal in the first ever women’s bobsled event.

Now, twenty years later, and to top off this story, I screwed up my courage and signed up to ride down the Olympic bobsled track. I was tucked in right behind the driver as the 4-man sled roared down the track. We hit 70 mph and pulled about 3 g’s. At the bottom, I got out of the sled a bit shakily.

But now I had a new point of view: Sliding on ice can be exhilarating.

This is Mary Heers and I’m Wild About Utah

Credits:
Photos: Courtesy Mary Heers,
Featured Audio: Courtesy & Copyright © J. Chase and K.W. Baldwin, Utah Public Radio upr.org
Text: Mary Heers, https://cca.usu.edu/files/awards/art-and-mary-heers-citation.pdf
Additional Reading: Lyle Bingham, https://bridgerlandaudubon.org/

Additional Reading

Wild About Utah, Mary Heers’ Wild About Utah Postings

The Track Sports: Bobsleigh, Luge, Skeleton, Alf Engen Ski Museum, Alf Engen Museum Foundation, https://engenmuseum.org/exhibit/track-sports-bobsleigh-luge-skeleton

Bakken and Flowers win first ever Women’s bobsleigh gold, Salt Lake 2002, International Olympic Committee, https://olympics.com/en/video/bakken-and-flowers-win-first-ever-women-s-bobsleigh-gold-salt-lake-2002

Wright, Sally H. N., Logan family provides ice thrillsShow pleases grandparents, neighbors, The Herald Journal, January 7, 2002, https://www.hjnews.com/logan-family-provides-ice-thrillsshow-pleases-grandparents-neighbors/article_8149fc2d-7e92-5554-a74c-97432423c555.html

January 9, 2023January 9, 2023

Why, It Was Definitely the Snow!

“Utah’s Winter King: A Key Individual in the History of Utah’s Ski Industry”
Photo from 1989 Utah History Fair
Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes

Snow-frosted Hoodoos of Bryce Canyon
Courtesy & Copyright Shannon Rhodes, Photographer

Snow. Tiny specks of dust and other particles in the air that attract water vapor to become ice crystals. That is what fascinated a man named Wilson ‘Snowflake’ Bentley enough to capture thousands of one-of-a-kind snowflake photographs and what drew my friend Alf to Utah. In the winter and early spring of 1989, I sat as a Bonneville Junior High ninth grader with Alf Engen in his office at Alta. As a presenter at the Utah History Fair that year, I was gathering stories and artifacts for my project titled Utah’s Winter King: A Key Individual in the History of Utah’s Ski Industry.

Engen shared stories about building ski jumps over the fences between his home and school and his journey from Norway to America, not to ski but to buy back the Engen estate divided up at his father’s death of the Spanish Flu in 1919. He said, “I was going to make enough money to go back, but I didn’t know how I was going to do that. I didn’t even know there was much snow here, I never read about that.” After sharing stories about arriving in Ellis Island, playing soccer in Milwaukee, scaffold hill jumping on Ecker Hill, and cross-country skiing as a forest service employee over Catherine Pass to imagine Alta as a ski hub, he ended with how he felt about jumping Utah’s snow: “They would say “Send Gummer–that is ‘old man’ in Norwegian–over first,” and I would have to do anything new. I knew I could do it, even if I had never tried it before. Once you are up there, you can fly.”

I had forgotten about that experience chatting about snow with a Utah snow giant until a few weeks ago, gazing out at the snow-frosted hoodoos of Bryce Canyon. I gripe about snow plowing piles and delayed-start school days, and I’d rather cut snowflakes from paper than be out in it most frigid days. Yet, this Christmas a friend gave me a blue and white book titled “The Little Book of Snow.”

For someone who grew up in “the greatest snow on earth,” I thought I knew snow well enough, but in addition to discovering linguistic similarities for the word snow and that some have estimated the number of snowflakes that fall to earth each year to be a number with at least 24 zeroes, I confirmed my suspicions about snow that is not white. I’ve often encountered pink snow patches at the high altitudes of Utah, and with a nudge from the watermelon snow paragraph, I found an intriguing citizen science opportunity online called The Living Snow Project led by Dr. Robin Kodner at Western Washington University. By contributing data about spring snow algal blooms through sample vials or at least observation photographs, scientists can study microscopic snow communities and their impact on snow melt.

Snow. When I asked him what about Utah made him stay, Alf Engen said, “Why, it was definitely the snow.” Snow is the stuff of which stories, science, and wonderful dreams are made.

I’m Shannon Rhodes, and I’m wild about 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: Shannon Rhodes

Additional Reading:

Blanchard, Duncan. 1970. The Snowflake Man. https://snowflakebentley.com/snowflake-man-bio

Coulthard, Sally. 2018. The Little Book of Snow. https://www.chroniclebooks.com/products/the-little-book-of-snow

Engen, Alan K. 2001. Alf Engen: A Son’s Reminiscences. https://issuu.com/utah10/docs/uhq_volume69_2001_number4/s/10191712

Greene, Jack. 2020. I Love Snow. Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/i-love-snow/

Larese-Casanova, Mark. 2014. Utah’s Rich Skiing History. Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/utahs-rich-skiing-history/

Libbrecht, Kenneth G. 1999. Guide to Snowflakes. https://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/class/class-old.htm

Liberatore, Andrea. 2011. Snowflakes. Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/snowflakes/

Living Snow Project. https://wp.wwu.edu/livingsnowproject/

Local Lexi. 2021. The History of “The Greatest Snow on Earth” https://www.skiutah.com/blog/authors/lexi/the-history-of-the-greatest-snow-on.

Martin, Jacqueline Briggs. 1998. Snowflake Bentley. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. https://www.amazon.com/Snowflake-Bentley-Jacqueline-Briggs-Martin/dp/0547248296

Strand, Holly. 2009. A Utah Skier’s Snow Lexicon. Wild About Utah, https://wildaboututah.org/a-utah-skiers-snow-lexicon/

Rascoe, Ayesha. 2022. Why Snow Is Turning Pink at High Altitudes. https://www.npr.org/2022/12/18/1143929924/why-snow-is-turning-pink-at-high-altitudes

Weller, Kristine. 2023. In a State Obsessed with Snowpack, Finding Pink Snow in Utah Is a Problem. https://www.kuer.org/health-science-environment/2023-01-03/in-a-state-obsessed-with-snowpack-finding-pink-snow-in-utah-is-a-problem

February 15, 2021July 18, 2022

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/