Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 November 1881 — The Great Salt Lake. [ARTICLE]

The Great Salt Lake.

Four barrels of water of the Great Salt Lake will leave, after evaporation, nearly a barrel of salt The lake was discovered in the year 1820, and no outlet from it has yet been ascertained. Four or five large streams empty themselves into it, and the facts of its still retaining its saline properties seems to point'to the conclusion that there exists some secret bed of saline deposit over which the waters flow, and that thus they continue salt—for, though the lake may be the residue of an immense sea which once covered the whole of this region, yet by its continuing so salt with the amount of fresh water poured into it daily, the idea of the existence of some such deposit from which it receives its supply seems to be only too probable. From the past fifteen years, until last year, the lake has been gradually rising; but in 1879 it receded two or three feet—a most unusual occurrence—owing to the exceptionally warm weather. There are no fish in the lake, but myriads of small flies cover its surface. The buoyancy of the water is so great that it is not at all an easy matter to drown in it. The entire lenth of the lake is eighty-five miles, and its breadh forty-five miles. Compared with the Dead Sea, the Great Salt Lake is longer by forty-three milts and broader by thirty-five miles.