United States or Saint Pierre and Miquelon ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It was the Pacific on the west, and the Wahsatch mountains on the east, with the broad valleys basking in a summer sun between them, through which rivers wound their dark serpentine lines, while away to the north-east the great desert lay, with its white sands glittering beneath the rays that fell upon it.
The train, on leaving Great Salt Lake at Ogden, passed northward for an hour as far as Weber River, having completed nearly nine hundred miles from San Francisco. From this point it took an easterly direction towards the jagged Wahsatch Mountains.
The broad plain which intervenes between its margin and the foot of the Wahsatch Range is almost entirely lost sight of; the mountain-slopes, their summits flecked with snow, seem to descend into water on every side except the northern, on which the blue line of the horizon is interrupted only by Antelope Island.
On leaving Omaha, it passes along the left bank of the Platte Rivet as far as the junction of its northern branch, follows its southern branch, crosses the Laramie territory and the Wahsatch Mountains, turns the Great Salt Lake, and reaches Salt Lake City, the Mormon capital, plunges into the Tuilla Valley, across the American Desert, Cedar and Humboldt Mountains, the Sierra Nevada, and descends, via Sacramento, to the Pacific its grade, even on the Rocky Mountains, never exceeding one hundred and twelve feet to the mile.
Southwest of the Fort, at the distance of four or five miles, a singular butte, the top of which is as level as the floor of a ball-room, rises to the height of eight hundred feet above the valley of Black's Fork, and commands a view of the entire broad plateau between the Wind River and the Uinta and Wahsatch Ranges.
It appears, therefore, that under present conditions the limit of agricultural development in the dry basin between the Sierra and the Wahsatch has been already approached, a result caused not alone by natural restrictions as to the area capable of development, but by the extraordinary stimulus furnished by the mines to agricultural effort.
The train, on leaving Great Salt Lake at Ogden, passed northward for an hour as far as Weber River, having completed nearly nine hundred miles from San Francisco. From this point it took an easterly direction towards the jagged Wahsatch Mountains.
Thirty miles to the east looking from this distance strangely like flocks of sheep grazing at the base of the mountains can be seen the white- painted houses of the Mormon settlements, that thickly dot the narrow but fertile strip of agricultural land, between Bear River and the mighty Wahsatch Mountains, that, rearing their snowy crest skyward, shut out all view of what lies beyond.
This lake and river I saw and examined myself; and also saw the Wahsatch and Bear River Mountains which inclose the waters of the lake on the east, and constitute, in that quarter, the rim of the Great Basin.
"Here you see," said the senator, "how my pertinacity and Abraham's faith removed mountains." Reconnoissances made in 1862, 1863, 1864, had demonstrated that a serious question would arise in reaching the Humboldt Valley from the western foot of the Wahsatch Mountains in the Salt Lake Basin. Should the line go north or south of the lake?
Word Of The Day