National Forest Resources of Utah 7 



Range have national forests been created, as the grants made to the 

 Union Pacific Railroad left very little public land in those localities. 

 Against the Wyoming line lies the Uinta Range, a broad, high 

 uplift whose central crest has been boldly carved by glaciers into 

 peaks 12,000 to 13,000 feet in elevation, connected by ridges almost 

 as high. These high crests are above timber line, but in the lake- 

 studded glacial basins and lower down occur the most extensive 

 solid bodies of timber in Utah. The predominating tree is lodgepole 

 pine, although Douglas fir, Engelmann spruce, alpine fir, and, at the 

 lower elevations bordering the forest, western yellow pine, are also 



E resent. Lodgepole pine covers at least twice the area occupied 

 y all the other evergreens together. On the eastern end of the 

 Uintas is located the Ashley National Forest; the northwestern 

 shoulder forms a part of the Wasatch National Forest; and the 

 Uinta National Forest extends up on to the southwestern portion. 



West of the Uinta Range lie the Wasatch Mountains, rugged and 

 picturesque, all of which, except the part lying north of Salt Lake 

 City, are covered by national forests (fig. 5). These steep moun- 

 tains are cut by deep short canyons and have many high rocky peaks. 

 Their timberlands, never very extensive, now consist for the most 

 part of young stands, as these forests were drawn on very heavily 

 for timber in the early days by settlers in the vSalt Lake and Utah 

 Valleys. 



West of the Wasatch Range begins the long series of " desert 

 mountains" — narrow, north and south trending ranges — which are 

 characteristic of the country westward through Nevada. They are 

 generally low and decidedly arid and support few or no forests. Only 

 the parts of the ranges lying next west of the Oquirrh Mountains con- 

 tain national forest lands — two small divisions of the Wasatch Forest. 

 Even on these divisions timber values are very low, the forests being 

 valuable chiefly for regulating the scanty stream flow, upon which 

 the surrounding ranches are entirely dependent. 



East and south of the Wasatch Range stretches the great series of 

 plateaus that, hemming in the Uinta Basin on the south, extends 

 eastward to the Colorado line and southward through the center of 

 Utah into Arizona. Some of these plateaus are tilted, folded, or 

 faulted. Others lie horizontal and apparently unaffected by geo- 

 logic forces. A few are more or less buried in lava. Except in these 

 last-mentioned cases, they consist of rather easily eroded sedimentary 

 rocks. Wherever they are high enough to get sufficient rainfall to 

 support timber or to be the source of streams important for irriga- 

 tion, national forests are to be found on them, as Figure 1 indicates. 

 Though all these plateaus have a general family resemblance, their 

 forest characteristics change, not only with minor geologic differences 

 but also with differences in climate and rainfall. 



Figure 6 indicates these differences in forest and other growth, 

 resulting from differences of topography, geology, and climate. 

 Because the national forests represent administrative rather than 

 natural units, in such cases as the Wasatch Forest, for example, the 

 average of conditions on the several dissimilar areas is shown in the 

 diagram, rather than the characteristics of any part of the forest. 

 Nevertheless, in spite of this composite treatment of some forests, the 

 diagram brings out the essential differences between the various 



