![]() ![]() In 1907, Bill Rishel and two local businessmen tested the suitability of the salt for driving by taking a Pierce-Arrow onto its surface. Army officer who explored the Intermountain West in the 1830s. Geologist Grove Karl Gilbert named the area after Benjamin Bonneville, a U.S. History Bonneville Salt Flats during the winter has about 1 inch of water on it. It is estimated to hold 147 million tons of salt, approximately 90% of which is common table salt. The Flats are about 12 miles (19 km) long and 5 miles (8 km) wide, with a crust almost 5 ft (1.5m) thick at the center and less than one inch (2.5 cm) towards the edges. Access to the Flats is open to the public. It is public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management and is known for land speed records at the Bonneville Speedway. ![]() A remnant of the Pleistocene Lake Bonneville, it is the largest of many salt flats west of the Great Salt Lake. The Bonneville Salt Flats are a densely packed salt pan in Tooele County in northwestern Utah, United States. ![]() Keach believes that groundwater is the key to increasing the size of the Bonneville Salt Flats. ![]() “They’ve been doing this historically for a long time.” “You can go into Google Earth and look, in an ad hoc way, and look at the last thirty years, or forty years of imagery across the salt flat … and you see the salt flat expand and contract,” Keach said. The idea is to add more water to the surface, which leads to evaporation, and more salt “growing.”īut Keach said a more scientific approach is needed that directs how much water to lay down, and when to lay it down. Keach said that projects have been proposed that would manually pump salt water from beneath the flats to the surface of the flats. Reversing the shrinking Bonneville Salt Flats? So how are the two related? As the Great Salt Lake decreases, and the thickness of the flats decreases, the racing distance gets shorter. And the surface, which isn’t 100% dry, keeps tire temperatures down at high speeds. ![]()
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