Knolls | |
|---|---|
  Knolls Location of Knolls within the State of Utah  Knolls Knolls (the United States) | |
| Coordinates: 40°43′23″N113°17′23″W / 40.72306°N 113.28972°W | |
| Country | United States |
| State | Utah |
| County | Tooele |
| Elevation | 4,229 ft (1,289 m) |
| Time zone | UTC-7 (Mountain (MST)) |
| • Summer (DST) | UTC-6 (MDT) |
| Area code | 435 |
| GNIS feature ID | 1437607 [1] |
Knolls is an unincorporated community in north-central Tooele County, Utah, United States. [1]
The community is located in Great Salt Lake Desert in the western portion of the state, close to the Utah Test and Training Range. [2] Exit 41 on Interstate 80 (I‑80) provides access to Knolls.
Prior to the building of I‑80, Knolls was serviced by U.S. Route 40 and was the eastern terminus of the Wendover Cut-off.
During the 1970s and up until 1985 (possibly longer) one family owned and operated the entire town, consisting of a towing service, a small convenience store, a gas station, and a small motel. There was no water on site, and water had to be trucked in by a small tank truck. The town was for sale for a relatively small amount in 1985. There is photo evidence of a small tavern at one time. There is little visible evidence that there was ever any town, buildings, or gas station left.
Knolls is located in a nearly uninhabited desert area, approximately 40 miles (64 km) east of the Bonneville Salt Flats and 80 miles (130 km) west of Salt Lake City. The landscape contains mud flats, salt flats, and gypsum sand dunes. [3] Much of the surrounding land is owned by the Bureau of Land Management and is maintained as an off highway vehicle park, known as the Knolls Recreation Area. [4]
Knolls is the site of one place listed on the National Register of Historic Places: the GAPA Launch Site, which is a concrete bunker and missile launch pad where the first Ground to Air Pilotless Aircraft missile was successfully tested in 1946. [5] The site is marked by a placard installed by the Utah State History division.
Knolls is also the site of a hazardous waste dump site known as Grassy Mountain.
The Great Salt Lake Desert experiences a desert climate with hot summers and cold winters. The desert is an excellent example of a cold desert climate, rare outside of North America. The desert's elevation, 4,250 feet (1,300 m) above sea level, makes temperatures cooler than lower elevation deserts, such as the Mojave. Due to the high elevation and aridity, temperatures drop sharply after sunset. Summer nights are comfortably cool. Winter highs are generally above freezing, and winter nights are bitterly cold, with temperatures often dropping close to zero.
| Climate data for Knolls, Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah. (Elevation 4,250ft) | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Record high °F (°C) | 63 (17) | 63 (17) | 79 (26) | 87 (31) | 98 (37) | 104 (40) | 106 (41) | 103 (39) | 99 (37) | 89 (32) | 71 (22) | 66 (19) | 106 (41) |
| Average high °F (°C) | 36.5 (2.5) | 41.4 (5.2) | 54.4 (12.4) | 62.3 (16.8) | 72.3 (22.4) | 83.5 (28.6) | 92.8 (33.8) | 90.9 (32.7) | 80.0 (26.7) | 64.3 (17.9) | 46.5 (8.1) | 36.5 (2.5) | 63.4 (17.4) |
| Average low °F (°C) | 16.9 (−8.4) | 19.3 (−7.1) | 29.1 (−1.6) | 36.6 (2.6) | 44.9 (7.2) | 54.7 (12.6) | 62.1 (16.7) | 59.5 (15.3) | 48.0 (8.9) | 34.4 (1.3) | 23.3 (−4.8) | 14.5 (−9.7) | 37.0 (2.8) |
| Record low °F (°C) | −16 (−27) | −17 (−27) | −1 (−18) | 14 (−10) | 24 (−4) | 35 (2) | 43 (6) | 39 (4) | 25 (−4) | 8 (−13) | −3 (−19) | −25 (−32) | −25 (−32) |
| Average precipitation inches (mm) | 0.61 (15) | 0.46 (12) | 0.91 (23) | 1.01 (26) | 1.23 (31) | 0.68 (17) | 0.36 (9.1) | 0.31 (7.9) | 0.56 (14) | 0.77 (20) | 0.61 (15) | 0.38 (9.7) | 7.88 (200) |
| Average snowfall inches (cm) | 0.3 (0.76) | 0.1 (0.25) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0 (0) | 0.1 (0.25) | 0.5 (1.3) |
| Source: The Western Regional Climate Center [7] | |||||||||||||
Tooele County is a county in the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2020 United States Census, the population was 72,698. Its county seat and largest city is Tooele. The county was created in 1850 and organized the following year.
Tooele is a city in Tooele County in the U.S. state of Utah. The population was 35,742 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Tooele County. Located approximately 30 minutes southwest of Salt Lake City, Tooele is known for Tooele Army Depot, for its views of the nearby Oquirrh Mountains and the Great Salt Lake.
The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja California. It is noted for both its arid climate and the basin and range topography that varies from the North American low point at Badwater Basin in Death Valley to the highest point of the contiguous United States, less than 100 miles (160 km) away at the summit of Mount Whitney. The region spans several physiographic divisions, biomes, ecoregions, and deserts.
White Sands National Park is an American national park located in the state of New Mexico and completely surrounded by the White Sands Missile Range. The park covers 145,762 acres in the Tularosa Basin, including the southern 41% of a 275 sq mi (710 km2) field of white sand dunes composed of gypsum crystals. This gypsum dunefield is the largest of its kind on Earth, with a depth of about 30 feet (9.1 m), dunes as tall as 60 feet (18 m), and about 4.5 billion short tons of gypsum sand.
The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range. The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife Fund, and the Central Basin and Range ecoregion defined by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and United States Geological Survey. It is a temperate desert with hot, dry summers and snowy winters. The desert spans large portions of Nevada and Utah, and extends into eastern California. The desert is one of the four biologically defined deserts in North America, in addition to the Mojave, Sonoran, and Chihuahuan Deserts.
The Bonneville Salt Flats are a densely packed salt pan in Tooele County in northwestern Utah, United States. A remnant of the Pleistocene Lake Bonneville, it is the largest of many salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake. It is public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is known for land speed records at the Bonneville Speedway. Access to the Flats is open to the public.
The Great Salt Lake Desert is a large dry lake in northern Utah, United States, between the Great Salt Lake and the Nevada border. It is a subregion of the larger Great Basin Desert, and noted for white evaporite Lake Bonneville salt deposits including the Bonneville Salt Flats.
El Mirage Lake is a dry lake bed in the northwestern Victor Valley of the central Mojave Desert, within San Bernardino County, California.
The Little Sahara Recreation Area is a large area of sand dunes, hills and sagebrush flats located in the northeast corner of the Sevier Desert in Juab County in the west central part of Utah, United States.
Interstate 80 (I-80) is a part of the Interstate Highway System that runs from San Francisco, California, to Teaneck, New Jersey. The portion of the highway in the US state of Utah is 197.51 miles (317.86 km) long through the northern part of the state. From west to east, I-80 crosses the state line from Nevada in Tooele County and traverses the Bonneville Salt Flats—which are a part of the larger Great Salt Lake Desert. It continues alongside the Wendover Cut-off—the corridor of the former Victory Highway—US Route 40 (US-40) and the Western Pacific Railroad Feather River Route. After passing the Oquirrh Mountains, I-80 enters the Salt Lake Valley and Salt Lake County. A short portion of the freeway is concurrent with I-15 through Downtown Salt Lake City. At the Spaghetti Bowl, I-80 turns east again into the mouth of Parleys Canyon and Summit County, travels through the mountain range, and intersects the eastern end of I-84 near Echo Reservoir before turning northeast toward the Wyoming border near Evanston. I-80 was built along the corridor of the Lincoln Highway and the Mormon Trail through the Wasatch Range. The easternmost section also follows the historical routes of the first transcontinental railroad and US-30S.
The Wendover Cut-off, also called the Wendover Road or Wendover Route, is a two-lane highway in the western part of Tooele County in the U.S. state of Utah. Stretching 40.3 miles (64.9 km) from Wendover to Knolls across the Bonneville Salt Flats, a part of the Great Salt Lake Desert, the cut-off was once part of the primary link between the Nevada state line and Salt Lake City. In 2012, between 240 and 250 vehicles used the cut-off near its western terminus in Wendover on an average day.
The landlocked U.S. state of Utah is known for its natural diversity and is home to features ranging from arid deserts with sand dunes to thriving pine forests in mountain valleys. It is a rugged and geographically diverse state at the convergence of three distinct geological regions: the Rocky Mountains, the Great Basin, and the Colorado Plateau.
The Lakeside Mountains are about a 34 miles (55 km) long mountain range located on the southwest perimeter of the Great Salt Lake; the range is located in northeast Tooele County and south Box Elder County in Utah, United States.
The GAPA Launch Site and Blockhouse near Knolls in Tooele County, Utah dates from 1946. It is a work of the Boeing Airplane Co. Facilities Dept.
Tetzlaff Peak is a 6,267-foot elevation (1,910 m) mountain summit located in Tooele County, Utah, United States.
Rishel Peak is a 6,212-foot elevation (1,893 m) mountain summit located in Tooele County, Utah, United States.
Jenkins Peak is a 7,268-foot elevation (2,215 m) mountain summit located in Tooele County, Utah, United States.
Volcano Peak is a 6,011-foot elevation (1,832 m) mountain summit located in Tooele County, Utah, United States.
Graham Peak is a 7,563-foot elevation (2,305 m) mountain summit located in Tooele County, Utah, United States.
Cobb Peak is a 7,021-foot elevation (2,140 m) mountain summit located in Tooele County, Utah, United States.
Media related to Knolls, Utah at Wikimedia Commons
Municipalities and communities of Tooele County, Utah, United States | ||
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| Cities |  | |
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| Townships | ||
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| Unincorporated communities | ||
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| Indian reservations | ||
| Footnotes | ‡This populated place also has portions in an adjacent county or counties | |
