The Utah Salt Flats: Lake Bonneville’s Alkaline Footprint
By Jordy
The U.S. state of Utah is probably best known for two things: Mormons, and the vast salt lake which gives its name to their most celebrated city. With an average surface area of seventeen hundred square miles, Great Salt Lake is the largest saline lake in the western hemisphere and the fourth largest in the world, but it is a child’s paddling pool compared to its ancient predecessor Lake Bonneville.
Lake Bonneville — named for Captain Benjamin de Bonneville, a Parisian-born US Army officer who was one of the first Europeans to explore the American West — existed during the last Ice Age and averaged a surface area of twentythousand square miles, a size comparable to modern day Lake Michigan. The name was, of course, given in retrospect. Since the lake’s existence predated the arrival of homo sapiens in the Great Basin region by several millennia, it was never seen by human eyes.
First formed around thirty two thousand years ago, this enormous pluvial lake covered not only most of northern and western Utah but also parts of neighbouring Idaho and Nevada. It continued to exist mostly unchanged for the next sixteen thousand years, until an overflow at what is now Red Rock Pass in Idaho swept away natural barriers, resulting in a catastrophic flood. The geological record suggests that this flood lasted for up to a year, and by the time it ended the lake level had fallen by more than a hundred metres.
The shoreline remained more or less constant for another five centuries, but eventually the changing climate completed the work begun by the flood. As the Great Ice Age came to an end and the Earth became warmer and drier, the glaciers receded and so did Lake Bonneville, finally evaporating to leave behind the much smaller and shallower body of water we know as Great Salt Lake — and to its west, the famous Bonneville Salt Flats.
Composed of the concentrated alkaline deposits formerly suspended in the waters of Lake Bonneville, the flats are a rare and impressive sight: a vast white level plain stretching all the way from Salt Lake to the mountains of Nevada. The densely-packed salt pan or playa — which in places is up to six feet deep — is one of the smoothest and flattest areas on Earth, so much so that when standing on it is possible to see the curvature of the planet’s surface. And during the summer, when it is firm and dry, it is perfect for use as a racetrack; enthusiasts bring specially designed cars and motorbikes from all over the States to participate in the annual Speed Week.
It is also a place where records are set. Rocket-powered vehicles have in the past achieved speeds in excess of six hundred miles per hour on the flats, although racing is now carefully controlled due to concerns over erosion.
It may seem curious at first that the Salt Flats specifically are given as Kurtis’ birthplace, since they are a geological feature and not a town or city. In fact the closest thing to a habitation on the flats is the casino-resort town of Wendover, so far to the west that it straddles Utah’s border with Nevada. However, Kurtis’ creator and lead Angel of Darkness writer Murti Schofield has made reference to the existence of a “secure Lux Veritatis bolthole” beneath the flats themselves, where Kurtis’ father took his mother Marie to give birth in safety away from the forces of darkness that relentlessly pursued them.
Like Kurtis himself, the Salt Flats are a literal relic, the final remnant of something bigger and more powerful. By the time of Angel of Darkness, the age of the Lux Veritatis is over. Lake Bonneville too is long gone, but it has left a permanent footprint on North America.
