GREAT SALT LAKE DISAPPEAR- 

 ING. 



IRRIGATION SYSTEM OF MORMONS DEPLETING 

 THE STREAMS THAT FEED IT. 



Before another century nears its end the Great Salt Lake, the 

 mysterious, tideless inland sea cradled 4,000 feet above the level of 

 oceans, may have disappeared into air. For three decades its shore 

 line steadily has been contracting, its depth continually growing less, 

 until today its ultimate destiny is written so legibly that none deny' 

 the approach. The declaration that the waters are being wafted into 

 the atmosphere is no figure of speech. Evaporation is the foe which 

 in certain course of time, under prevailing conditions, is going to 

 transform the vast expanse of water into a huge salt plain. 



Ages ago, thousands of years the geologists say, the Great Salt 

 Lake, then a sea covering the greater part, possibly the whole, of the 

 great basin began to subside, but strangely enough the agency which 

 now is hastening its disappearance is distinctly of human origin. Of 

 more astonishing purport still the Mormans, who made the valley of 

 the Jordan widen from a narrow strip of green to miles on miles of 

 fields of unexcelled fertility, are themselves the people who have sac- 

 rificed the lake. That they may exist, that their rich tracts may con- 

 tinue to bear, they deliberately are cutting off the soured of fresh 

 water supply of the mountain sea. Stagnant and helpless the lake is 

 coming to lie at the complete mercy of a pitiless sun. 



Not many years ago geographers and descriptive writers took a 

 fancy to expressing the belief that the Great Salt Lake was fed not 

 alone by the four rivers which empty into it, but by hidden springs at 

 its bottom. As long as no one took the trouble to question the asser- 

 tions they were accepted as facts, and by many persons are still 

 credited. If there were springs at intervals along the bed of the lake 

 it would not matter so much whether the rivers continued to pour 

 their contents into the basin, but no springs exist. They were called 

 into the pages of text books and into the accounts of travelers to ex- 

 plain why the lake is so exceptionally salt. It sounded much better 

 to say that nature, by one of its freaks, had opened up the crust of the 

 earth at this point and sent volumes of briny water bubbling 

 forth, something after the style of geysers and sulphur springs, than 

 to make the simple statement that the saltness, as with the ocean, 



