84 A. G. Tansley. 
Mountains drier conditions again prevailed and the Pignon-Juniper 
formation (Finns edulis and Juniperus Utahensis) was met with. 
The country traversed by the railroad between this point and 
Salt Lake City is practically all irrigated and highly cultivated, 
with orchards, alfalfa, corn, etc. Of planted trees Salix babylonica, 
Lombardy and other poplars and Catnlpa are conspicuous. 
The party received a warm welcome at Salt Lake City, where 
they were entertained to lunch—prefaced by a specially excellent 
cocktail—at the Commercial Club, the remainder of the day being 
spent in sight-seeing, including a trip to Saltair Beach, where several 
members of the party enjoyed the peculiar experience of bathing 
in the Lake. An area of salt flat with Distichlis, Allenrolfea , 
Salicornia, etc., was visited on the way. 
On Sunday, August 24th, the day was spent in the Tooele valley 
to the south of Great Salt Lake, the scene, during 1912, of very 
careful vegetation and habitat analysis by Messrs. Kearney, Briggs 
and Shantz, of the United States Department of Agriculture. The 
train was taken to Tooele, and the party drove from that point to 
Grantsville close to the Lake, where the Union Pacific railroad 
was taken back to Salt Lake City. Stops were made at frequent 
intervals and the various plant-associations visited. 
Tooele valley is about sixteen miles long, thirteen miles broad 
at its upper (southern) end and seventeen miles broad at its northern 
(lower) end where it becomes continuous with the flat southern 
shore of the lake. The difference of level between Tooele (at the 
upper) and Grantsville (at the lower end) is about 680 feet. The 
mountains rise steeply from the sides of the valley, whose floor is 
covered by a great depth of alluvial deposits largely of Eocene age. 
The area was afterwards covered by the waters of “ Lake Bonneville ” 
which occupied the whole area in Pleistocene times. No permanent 
streams now reach the valley proper. During the Lake Bonneville 
period the waters of the Salt Lake basin reached a maximum of 
1000 feet above the present level of Great Salt Lake, and this level 
is marked by conspicuous beach lines on the surrounding mountains. 
The present climate is semi-arid, evaporation greatly exceeding 
the average rainfall of about sixteen inches per annum, and Great 
Salt Lake is still shrinking fairly rapidly. 
The natural vegetation of the valley shows a very striking 
zonation of associations roughly parallel with the lake shore. These 
are in general correlated with the total salt-content of the soil, but 
no correlation was found with the chemical composition of the soil 
