Climate Change: Lake Bonneville

Media: photography

Number of images: 17

Print size: 16x20 inches

Execution: 2024

Lake Bonneville was a cold freshwater lake (the largest Late Pleistocene paleolake in the North American Great Basin) that covered 51,799 square km (20,000 square miles) of western Utah, portions of Nevada and Idaho with a depth of 298 m (980 feet). Beginning around 30,000 BCE and reaching a peak elevation around 18,000 BCE, it began to subside by overflowing into the Snake and Columbia rivers. By 15,000 BCE it dropped approximately 130 m (430 ft) to equal the average elevation of modern day Great Salt Lake. Birds and animals such as bison, big-horn sheep, mammoths, mastodons, camels, horses, dire wolves, saber-toothed cats, giant ground sloths, muskoxen, short faced bears as well as seven species of fish fauna have been documented to have lived in the area.

Around 13,000 BCE., nomadic Paleoindians are believed to have arrived, first for hunting and fishing, later for settling down.

The Great Salt Lake today is a remnant of Lake Bonneville.

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville