Death Valley National Park is an American national park that straddles the California–Nevada border, east of the Sierra Nevada. The park boundaries include Death Valley, the northern section of Panamint Valley, the southern section of Eureka Valley and most of Saline Valley. The park occupies an interface zone between the arid Great Basin and Mojave deserts, protecting the northwest corner of the Mojave Desert and its diverse environment of salt-flats, sand dunes, badlands, valleys, canyons and mountains. Death Valley is the largest national park in the contiguous United States, as well as the hottest, driest and lowest of all the national parks in the United States. It contains Badwater Basin, the second-lowest point in the Western Hemisphere and lowest in North America at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level. More than 93% of the park is a designated wilderness area. The park is home to many species of plants and animals that have adapted to the harsh desert environment including creosote bush, Joshua tree, bighorn sheep, coyote, and the endangered Death Valley pupfish, a survivor from much wetter times. UNESCO included Death Valley as the principal feature of its Mojave and Colorado Deserts Biosphere Reserve in 1984.
The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. It lies in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah and has a substantial impact upon the local climate, particularly through lake-effect snow. It is a remnant of Lake Bonneville, a prehistoric body of water that covered much of western Utah.
Lake Bonneville was the largest Late Pleistocene paleolake in the Great Basin of western North America. It was a pluvial lake that formed in response to an increase in precipitation and a decrease in evaporation as a result of cooler temperatures. The lake covered much of what is now western Utah and at its highest level extended into present-day Idaho and Nevada. Many other hydrographically closed basins in the Great Basin contained expanded lakes during the Late Pleistocene, including Lake Lahontan in northwestern Nevada.
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.
The Black Rock Desert is a semi-arid region of lava beds and playa, or alkali flats, situated in the Black Rock Desert–High Rock Canyon Emigrant Trails National Conservation Area, a silt playa 100 miles (160 km) north of Reno, Nevada that encompasses more than 300,000 acres (120,000 ha) of land and contains more than 120 miles (200 km) of historic trails. It is in the northern Nevada section of the Great Basin with a lakebed that is a dry remnant of Pleistocene Lake Lahontan.
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 Jordan River, in the state of Utah, United States, is a river about 51 miles (82 km) long. Regulated by pumps at its headwaters at Utah Lake, it flows northward through the Salt Lake Valley and empties into the Great Salt Lake. Four of Utah's six largest cities border the river: Salt Lake City, West Valley City, West Jordan, and Sandy. More than a million people live in the Jordan Subbasin, part of the Jordan River watershed that lies within Salt Lake and Utah counties. During the Pleistocene, the area was part of Lake Bonneville.
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.
Places of interest in the Death Valley area are mostly located within Death Valley National Park in eastern California.
Antelope Island ,with an area of 42 square miles (109 km2), is the largest of ten islands located within the Great Salt Lake in Utah. The island lies in the southeastern portion of the lake, near Salt Lake City and Davis County, and becomes a peninsula when the lake is at extremely low levels. It is protected as Antelope Island State Park.
The Pilot Range is a mountain range straddling the border of Box Elder County, Utah and Elko County, Nevada, United States. Lying 50 miles west of the Great Salt Lake, the range forms part of the north-west border of the Great Salt Lake Desert. The range reaches a maximum elevation of 10,716 feet at the summit of Pilot Peak. Most of the range is public Bureau of Land Management land and thus has no access restrictions. Its principal uses are mining, livestock grazing, and seasonal elk and deer hunting.
The Northern Basin and Range ecoregion is a Level III ecoregion designated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in the U.S. states of Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Utah, and California. It contains dissected lava plains, rolling hills, alluvial fans, valleys, and scattered mountain ranges in the northern part of the Great Basin. Although arid, the ecoregion is higher and cooler than the Snake River Plain to the north and has more available moisture and a cooler climate than the Central Basin and Range to the south. Its southern boundary is determined by the highest shoreline of Pleistocene Lake Bonneville, which once inundated the Central Basin and Range. The western part of the region is internally drained; its eastern stream network drains to the Snake River system.
The Silver Island Range, also called the Silver Island Mountains, is a mountain range in Utah, United States, situated the northwest corner of Tooele County and the southwest corner of Box Elder County, about 15 miles (24 km) northeast of Wendover.
Rush Lake is a shallow saline lake in Tooele County in the U.S. state of Utah. It is a remnant of Lake Bonneville, an ancient postglacial inland sea that covered much of the western United States during the Ice Ages. The lake is a natural impoundment of a stream that drains into the Great Salt Lake. Rush Lake varies in size, evaporating at about 2 feet (0.61 m) per year, although occasional floods refill the lake. The average surface elevation is 4,951 feet (1,509 m).
Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge is at the southern end of the Great Salt Lake Desert, part of the Great Basin in Juab County, Utah, United States. The Refuge is managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. As an oasis in the Great Basin Desert in western Utah, Fish Springs serves a variety of species including fish, migratory birds, deer, coyotes, pronghorn, cougars and other native species. The reserve can be reached by paved road from Lynndyl to Topaz Mountain and then by improved dirt road to the Pony Express Road/Lincoln Highway improved dirt road which runs through the Refuge. The Refuge also is a recreational area for permitted outdoor activities. The Fish Springs Range runs north to south and is immediately west of the Wildlife Refuge.
Tule Valley is a valley in Millard County, Utah, United States.
Little Cottonwood Creek is one of the principal streams entering Salt Lake Valley from the east. The creek rises near the summit of the Wasatch Mountains, a short distance south of the ski resort town of Alta, and flows in a westerly direction through Little Cottonwood Canyon until it emerges into Salt Lake Valley about eleven miles from its source. Thence its course is north westerly through Sandy, Midvale and Murray, Utah until it empties into the Jordan River, about six miles south of Salt Lake City. Its whole length is nearly 27 miles (43 km). The headwaters of Little Cottonwood Creek are in Little Cottonwood Canyon, a glaciated canyon in Uinta-Wasatch-Cache National Forest and the Wasatch and Uinta Mountains eco-region. One of the main tributaries of the creek rises in Cecret Lake, a small sheet of water situated near Alta. The entire Little Cottonwood Creek drainage basin encompasses 46 square miles (120 km2), ranging in elevation from about 4,490 to 11,500 feet.
Tetzlaff Peak is a 6,267-foot elevation (1,910 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.
