Mondo Knows Facts
The Great Salt Lake shrank from Lake Bonneville
It is the remnant of Lake Bonneville, which once covered much of what is now Utah As the climate dried at the end of the last ice age, the lake shrank and left terraces on the surrounding hills. It has no outlet to the sea, so dissolved minerals stay behind and make the water far saltier than the ocean. Its level rises and falls with years of snow and drought. It sits in Mondo's world geography collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
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Chicago reversed a river to protect its drinking waterEngineers dug a canal in 1900 so the Chicago River ran away from Lake Michigan instead of into itLake Turkana is the largest desert lakeIt sits in dry country in northern Kenya and its water is alkaline and slightly salineLoch Ness holds more water than all English lakesIts great depth gives it a volume larger than every lake in England and Wales put togetherThe Caspian is named for a people long goneIts name comes from the Caspi, a group recorded in antiquity, not from any present-day nationLake Baikal holds one fifth of Earth unfrozen fresh waterLocated in Siberia, Lake Baikal contains more water than all the North American Great Lakes combined.The Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of waterDespite its name, the Caspian Sea is an endorheic basin with no outlets to the world's oceans.
🗺️ World Geographyfact 165 of 200
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Tags: lakes, united-states, geology
The Great Salt Lake shrank from Lake Bonneville: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- It is the remnant of Lake Bonneville, which once covered much of what is now Utah. The figure is taken from USGS, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a world geography fact?
- Yes. It sits on the World Geography shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.