ON THE SOPPOSED ANCIENT OUTLET OF GREAT 



SALT LAKE. ■ 



By A. S. Packard, Jr. 



While attached for a few weeks this summer to Hayden's United 

 States Geological and Geographical Survey of the Territories, I learned 

 from conversations with General P. E. Connor, late of the United States 

 Army, and others, of the supposed existence of an old river-bed, which 

 probably drained, in part at least, the lake which in Quaternary times 

 formerly filled the Salt Lake Valley. I have been unable to find any 

 reference to such an outlet in the report of Fremont, Stansbury, or 

 Hayden. The following quotation, extracted by Professor Hayden from 

 the second volume of the Pacific E^ilroad Eeports, page 97, shows, on the 

 contrary, that no outlet has been ^apposed to exist : — 



" These banks are not peculiar to the vicinity of this lake of the 

 basin, but were observed near the lakes in Franklin Yalley, and will 

 probably be found near other lakes, and in the numerous small basins 

 which united form the Great Basin. They clearly seem to have been 

 formed and left dry within a period so recent that it would seem impos- 

 sible for the waters which formed them to have escaped into the sea, 

 either by great convulsions opening passages for them, or by the gradual 

 breaking-up of the distant shore (rim of the basin), thus draining them 

 off without leaving abundant records of the escaping waters, as legible 

 at least as the old shores they formed." 



My object at the present moment is simply to call the attention of 

 geologists and geographers to the facts stated by General Connor, sug- 

 gested by railroad-surveys made in Southern Utah. An intelligent man 

 who has lived for seven years on the shores of Salt Lake, and also Mr. 

 J. E. Clayton, mining-engineer, of Salt Lake City, who has traveled much 

 in Southern and Central Utah, have kindly given me confirmatory 

 information regarding this ancient river-bed. 



It appears also that there is a very general impression that such an 

 outlet formerly existed and drained the waters of the lake into the Gulf 

 of California or possibly into the Pacific Ocean emptying near San Diego. 



General Connor, my original informant, has kindly indicated, on a map 

 of Utah and adjoining regions lying southward, the course of this sup- 

 posed river-bed. The rim of the present Salt Lake is lowest at Skull 

 Yalley, which opens into the lake at a point on the western side of the 

 lake due west of the northern extremity of Antelope Island. The outlet 

 is said to be somewhat over one hundred feet above the present level of 

 the lake. The river-bed has been traced by railroad-surveyors for a 

 distance of over one hundred miles, in a southerly direction, to the 

 Sevier Lake Yalley, passing west of Sevier Lake. 



Beyond this, the course of the river-basin is purely conjectural ; but the 

 indications are that the river poured into the Colorado Eiver near the 

 confluence of the Muddy Eiver and Eio Yirgen. It is possible that it may 



