West Valley City

The [[rabbit:Great Salt Lake]] contains more salt than the Atlantic Ocean, a body of water so dense that swimmers cannot sink beneath its surface, yet early trappers called it a freshwater paradise. Mountain man Jim Bridger tasted the lake's brine in 1824 and declared he had found the Pacific Ocean, convinced no inland water could hold such salt.

The valley spreads east from this ancient lake bed, ringed by the Wasatch Mountains rising 7,000 feet above the basin floor. At 4,282 feet elevation, the city occupies the eastern bench where [[rabbit:Lake Bonneville]] once lapped against mountain foothills. This prehistoric lake covered 20,000 square miles of the Great Basin 15,000 years ago, leaving behind terraced shorelines still visible as horizontal