Lake Bonneville

Twenty thousand years ago, this land lay under water beneath Lake Bonneville, whose old shore can still be seen not far to the north. Formed in a basin from which no river reached the ocean, it became the largest lake in North America. Eventually the lake rose high enough to overflow into the Snake River, but after the climate grew drier and the great basin of Utah and Nevada became mostly a desert, it receded. Salt Lake and two other remnants are all that remain of this old twenty thousand square mile lake.

Idaho · United States