230 GEOLOGICAL SUKVEY OF THE TERRITOEIES. 



from the valley of the Columbia, does not consist, as has been supposed, 

 of one continuous mountain range which may be flanked, but of a num- 

 ber of long, abrupt, detached parallel ridges extending in a north and 

 south direction, and separated by intervening valleys, which constitute, 

 as it were, so many summit levels, whence the waters flow north on the 

 one side into the Columbia, and south on the other into the Great 

 Basin." And in this opinion he is quite correct, for in passing from 

 Cache Yalley to Marsh Valley, the one lying south and the other north 

 of this rim or divide, we found the two so united as to be continuous, 

 but elevated at one point by a kind of broad cross-ridge which acted as 

 a divide between the waters. I also know that such is the case with 

 the Malade Valley. 



In Utah this direction of the A'-alleys holds good with a remarkable 

 uniformity. Cache, Malade, Blue Spring, Hansee Spring, Jordan, 

 Tooele, Tintic, San Pete, Eush, Lone Eock, and Upper Sevier Valleys all 

 maintain this course almost direct, while the two i)arts of Salt Lake 

 conform very nearly to it. From the head of Malade Eiver to Utah 

 Lake is one continuous valley, varying less than five degrees from a 

 north and south course. Antelope and Fremont's Islands and Oquirrh 

 Mountains lie in a direct line with the course of the promontory which 

 separates the northern arms of the lake. Without any reference to this 

 law which seems to govern the hills and valleys, I colored, upon a large 

 map, the arable tracts of the Territory so far as at present known, espe- 

 cially those in which settlements have been made, when I was aston- 

 ished to find that from the thirty-ninth parallel to the northern bound- 

 ary almost every tract so colored would be included in a strip along the 

 one hundred and twelfth meridian not exceeding fifty miles in width ; 

 Tooele, Eush, and Weber Valleys being the only exceptions. Another 

 singular evidence of the force of this law which governed the formation 

 of these ranges and valleys is shown in Cache Valley, which maintains 

 the same direction, though closed at the lower end by a cross-range of 

 broken hills which shoot out from the Wahsatch Eange, and crossed 

 at the north end in a diagonal manner hj the valley of Bear Eiver. A 

 similar feature seems to govern the valleys of the western side of the 

 basin. Baron Eichtboren, speaking of the Washoe Mountains, says 

 that they are separated from the steep slope of the Sierra Nevada by a 

 continuous meridional depression, marked by the deep basins of Truckee 

 Valley, Washoe Valley, and Carson Valley. Though irregular, a gen- 

 eral direction may be traced in the summit range from north to south, 

 where it slopes down to a smooth table-land, traversed from west to east 

 by the Carson Eiver, flowing in a narrow crevice, beyond which the 

 Washoe Eange is protracted in the more elevated Pine-Nut Mountains. 



Notwithstanding this uniformity in the direction of the ridges and 

 valleys, it exerts but little influence on the few leading streams, but, on 

 the contrary, directs the course of all the minor streams. That it must 

 have more or less influence upon the lines of travel and traffic, and the 

 localities of the settlements of the Territory of Utah, is evident. A sin- 

 gle railroad line from Corinne or Brigham City, in the north, to Saint 

 George, in the extreme southwest, would have the principal agricultural 

 areas strung so closely along it that a day's drive with a team would 

 reach it from almost any settlement likely to be made for some years to 

 come, (the chief exceptions being those already named and those lying- 

 north of its terminus.) It is, therefore, easy to predict where the chief 

 highway of this Territory will be. 



