Salt Lake City, Utah
Salt Lake City, is the state capital of Utah, USA. It is a beautiful city that sits in a large mountain valley at an elevation of around 4,327 feet. Early inhabitants were the Ute and Shoshone. This city consists of many urban and nature photographic opportunities. There are a multitude of parks, hiking trails and cultural experiences for residents.
To the west is the Great Salt Lake which is the largest inland body of salt water in the Western Hemisphere. Salt Lake's geographic layout does create some difficulties as a strong inversion can set in the middle of Winter trapping hazy pollution until a windstorm clears it out. Summers can have the same issue effectively trapping wildfire haze and smoke. Temperatures can reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the Summer, and dip to 10 or below in the Winter. Major wind storms can move in from the west and the east, rain and snow storms move into the valley from all directions and there is even a monsoon season from mid-July through September. It, also, sits on a major earthquake fault.
The city is surrounded by the Wasatch and Oquirrh (Oak-er) Mountains. The name Oquirrh is actually a Goshute Indian word that means Wooded Mountain. The Oquirrh range consists of a string of 10,000 foot peaks that run north to south for nearly 30 miles. Wasatch means mountain pass or low pass over high range in the Ute language. –– Uplift of the modern Wasatch Range only began within the past 12 to 17 million years. However, during the Cretaceous Period (138 to 66 million years ago), compressional forces in the earth’s crust began to form mountains by stacking or thrusting up large sheets of rock in an area that included what is now the northeasternmost part of Utah, including the northern Wasatch Range. This thrust belt was then heavily eroded. About 38 to 24 million years ago large bodies of magma intruded parts of what is now the Wasatch Range. These granitic intrusions, eroded thrust sheets, and the older sedimentary rocks form the uplifted Wasatch Range as it is seen today. - By Mark R. Milligan, Utah Geological Survey -