13 Facts About Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville was the largest Late Pleistocene paleolake in the Great Basin of western North America.

Shorelines of Lake Bonneville are visible above Salt Lake City along the western front of the Wasatch Mountains and on other mountains throughout the Bonneville basin.

Great Salt Lake, Utah Lake, and Sevier Lake are the largest post-Bonneville lakes in the Bonneville basin.

For most of its existence Lake Bonneville had no river outlet and occupied a hydrographically closed basin.

Lake Bonneville had no river connection with the huge North American ice sheets.

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Gilbert after Benjamin Louis Eulalie de Lake Bonneville, a French-born officer in the United States Army who was a fur trapper and explorer in the American West.

Gilbert was one of the greatest geologists of the 19th Century, and his monumental work on Lake Bonneville, published in 1890, set the stage for scientific research on the paleolake that continues today.

Lake Bonneville began to rise from elevations similar to those of modern Great Salt Lake about 30,000 years ago.

Lake Bonneville was anomalous in the long-term history of the basin.

Shorelines of Lake Bonneville have been warped by isostatic processes, as was recognized by Gilbert and extensively studied since Gilbert's day.

Invertebrate fossils in Lake Bonneville deposits include mollusks and ostracodes, and bones of extinct mammals are found in Pleistocene deposits in the Bonneville basin.

Volcanic ashes in sediments of Lake Bonneville help with correlations and aid in deciphering lake history.

Lake Bonneville rose to its high stand during the final 20,000 years of the Pleistocene epoch, corresponding with the glacial maximum of the Laurentide and Cordillera Ice Sheets.