4. 
pULLE TIN: OF THE 
.) ISDE RACE 
No. 54 
Contribution from the Bureau of Soils, Milton Whitney, Chief. 
| May 8, 19140): 
(PROFESSIONAL PAPER.) 
~. 
THE TOPOGRAPHIC FEATURES OF THE DESERT BASINS OF 
THE UNITED STATES WITH REFERENCE TO THE POSSIBLE 
OCCURRENCE OF POTASH. ' 
By E. E. Free, Scientist in Fertilizer Investigations. 
INTRODUCTION. 
In essence the “desert basin” or “dry lake” potash theory is very 
simple and rests upon three propositions: 
(1) Rocks and soils give up various salts, including those of Blass 
sium, to drainage waters which flow over them. | 
(2) In areas of inclosed drainage these salts, still including those 
of potassium, are concentrated wherever the waters evaporate. 
(3) In this concentration the salts of potassium may have been 
sufficiently segregated from other salts to form a workable deposit. 
It has long been known that a considerable section of the United 
States is undrained and apparently contains regions satisfying the 
conditions requisite to potash? concentration. The problem set the 
writer; early in the present Governmental investigation into possible 
potash resources, was the study of all of these undrained areas, or 
“desert basins,” in the effort to determine which of them, if any, 
might possibly contain potash deposits, and which could reasonably 
be considered the more favorable from this point of view. The 
problem is a complex one and includes at least three distinct and 
different questions: (1) The question of accumulation; or of source, 
concentration and retention; (2) the question of sereesiion of the 
potash from the other salts; ane (3) the question of the aecessibility 
1 Manuscript prepared July, 1912. 
2 Throughout this bulletin the word “‘ potash ” is used in accordance with common usage, to signify any 
ordinary soluble compound of the element potassium. ; 
- 
‘NoTtE.—This paper describes a topographical examination which has been made of the desert basins 
of the United States, with a view to the possible discovery of potash in commercial quantities, and 
is intended particularly for those interested in the pred en of fertilizers. 
19750°—Bull 54—14——__1 
