| Utah Western Desert Ranges Area/Range |
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Geography
| Utah Western Desert Ranges   | 
| Page Type: Area/Range Location: Utah, United States, North America Lat/Lon: 39.79165°N / 113.40088°W Activities: Hiking, Mountaineering, Trad Climbing, Scrambling, Skiing Elevation: 12087 ft / 3684 m | Page By: MOCKBA Created/Edited: Apr 24, 2006 / May 1, 2006 Object ID: 190033 Hits: 3326 Loading... Page Score: 91.92% - 43 Votes Loading... Vote: Log in to vote |
Overview  Limestone escarpment of Notch Peak
Western Desert of Utah is located near the Eastern boundary of the Great Basin. The area was stretched in East-West direction by mighty tectonic forces, creating a series of sunken valleys separating ranges and escarpments running North to South. In the past 20 million years, the Earth crust here has experienced extension by as much as factor of two.
The West escarpment of the House Range, near the geographical center of the area, is the most prominent. A sheer limestone cliff of Notch Peak, over 4,000 ft tall, has a number of technical rock climbing routes. Further South, it is carved by unique limestone slot canyons such as Upper Hell-n'-Moria.
 Granite formations in Deep Creek Range
The weakened, rift-ridden crust resulted in strong recent (Tertiary) volcanism. The highest summits of the Western Desert are the legacy of metamorphizing intrusions, which left behind the granites of Deep Creek Range near Nevada state line. Ibapah Peak is one of the 3 rare 5,000 ft-prominence giants in the area.
 Geyser tufa of Crystal Peak
Lava fields and tubes, and geothermal hot springs may be found both North of Delta and further South across Sevier Desert, where Meadow Springs, Pavant Butte, and Tabernacle Hill are all prominent reminders of the recent volcanic activity. Further West, South of highway 6, Crystal Peak, a giant geyser tufa cone amidst vast lava fields, stands as a unique monument to the past geothermal activity.
North-East of Delta, a large area of sand dunes is known as Little Sahara. Though mostly left for motorized recreation, this is also a place where one can sand-ski in summer. Really. Just don't bring any new fancy gear if you go.
On the Eastern edge of the desert, the geological province of Great Basin meets Wasatch Range, the Western-most of the Rockies. The remaining two of the 5,000 ft-prominence mountains of the Utah Great Basin area are located here, beautiful Deseret Peak in the Stansburies and mostly forgotten Flat Top in the Oquirrhs (Since the Oquirrh Range is largely surrounded by towns and roads, and had very different history and very different access, it is left it out of this page, which focuses on the more remote ranges to the West. It is important to remember though that geologically it also belongs in the Great Basin. For the same reasons, other Great Basin edge peaks of the I-15 corridor, from Antelope Island down to Signal Peak, are listed as related, but not included on this page. Also listed as related are the nearby ranges across the Nevada line.)Wildlife and Flora  A bristlecone pine branch
A few special things to mention. Wild Horse can be seen in the desert, especially NE of the House Range. Bristlecones pines, the oldest living things on Earth, can be found at 8,000 to 10,000 ft elevation on many ranges, especially where the soil is alkaline due to limestones. Notch Peak and Wah Wah Mountain are some bristlecones locations.History  Fish Springs Lakes glisten at dawn
Apparently the first among the white people to enter the heart of Western Desert was Jedediah Smith, who camped at Fish Springs in 1827.
In 1847, the Northern fringes of the desert earned historical fame as the location of the ill-fated Hastings Cutoff. Donner Party camped in the present-day Stansburies before losing most of the oxen on their push across the salt flats to Silver Island.
The following year, Brigham Young led the Latter-Day Saints into the Salt Lake Valley. Tooele and Grantsville was settled by the Mormons by 1850, Nephi in 1851, and Sevier Delta area by 1860. Of the later Mormon settlements, perhaps the most historical was Iosepa in Skull Valley, established in 1899 in a half-hearted effort to segregate away the darker-skinned Mormons of Hawaiian extraction. This attempt folded soon, as did some other agricultural colonization attempts, most notably a Jewish 1911 commune on Sevier River.
In 1860, the region sprung to fame with the short-lived but ever-romantic Pony Express Trail, which crossed the area from Tooele Valley to Ibapah, with overland stage stations strewn across the entire desert. After the Overland Company folded, Lincoln Highway followed the same route, and one could even buy gas in Callao. But in 1927 it was rerouted for a more Northern route across the salt flats to Wendover. That's where I-80 crosses today.
 1889 geodetic station at Ibapah Peak "MARKED BY A COPPER BOLT IN A DRILL HOLE IN SOLID ROCK..."
In late 1860s, mineral exploration and mining started in the desert, first in the Tintic area on its Eastern fringes. In 1871 and 1872, resp., San Francisco Mountains and Drum Mountains Mining Districts were established. In the latter area, the town of Joy has become the first, and the last, larger-scale human settlement in the heart of the desert.
In 1870s and 1880s, the Transcontinental Survey triangulated across the desert from mountaintop heliothrope stations on Deseret and Onaqui peaks on the East side, and Ibapah and Moriah on the West side. The remains of the stations are still there at these high peaks.
Highway 6 has been constructed further South, crossing wilderness of House Range over Marjum Pass. That's where Bob Stinson, highway maintance worker and a self-styled desert hermit, built a cave-house and a desert garden in 1920. It still stands, but the highway is now rerouted even further South, across Skull Rock Pass.
 Painter Spring area as seen from Notch Peak
In 1930s, the CCC was at work in the desert, even in as remote locations at Painter Spring in Tule Valley.
During WW II, the feds pointed their attention to the desert at last (and alas). Topaz turned into a huge internment camp for Japanese Americans and, for a time, the biggest town in the whole desert. A huge army depot was built in Toeele Valley, still the world's largest chemical warfare storage even today, despite years of incineration of old rusting weapons. Aerial target grids crisscrossed the area around salt flats, and a faraway airfield at Wendover was the base of the 509th Composite Group with Col. Tibbets' B-29 mod, the Enola Gay. Mining at Gold Hill resumed, this time not for gold but to churn out toxic arsenic for the military. But perhaps the most destructive and lasting was the establishment of Dugway Proving Grounds in 1943, as the prime chemical warfare and the only biowarfare testing facility in the US. Granite Peak area was specifically designated for biological agent testing, rendering it off-limits for the reasonable climbers. Dugway claimed global fame in 1968, when a nerve gas testing accident left thousands of Skull Valley sheep dead or crippled. The Army never admitted much, but compensated the herders and buried the carcasses ... as it turned out, on the tribal land, so the Goshutes had to be paid compensation too. Much to their credit, the Deep Creek farmers then resisted the Army's push to expand Dugway, and won. Our continuing access to Deep Creek Range is thus the legacy of the resolve of the people of West Desert.
Notably, the area is now home to three more environmental flukes, the proposed tribal nuclear storage in Skull Valley, the nation's single biggest polluter, MagCorp plant, and the state's biggest coal-burning, acid rain-spewing plant, the IPP.Red TapeDeseret Peak area is designated wilderness, and another wilderness area is proposed in Cedar Mountains to the West, to spite the Goshutes' nuclear storage plans.
Granite Peak is off limits for biohazard.
Travel through Goshute Lands in Ibapah and Skull Valley requires tribal permissions, which might be not as hard to get as usually expected; check Doug Springmeyer's route description on Ibapah's West flank for detailsPaved Roads, Gas, Food, Camping  South Willow Canyon has 4 summer campgrounds
Everything is scarce, as befits the desert. Delta, Tooele, and Wendover are the true population centers at its edges. Hwy 6/50 crosses the South part of the desert from Delta to Ely, with a gas station and c-store at the state line. Three strips of blacktop reach into the desert, from route 6 to IPP and Topaz, from I-80 to Dugway, and from Nevada line to Ibapah. No improved campgrounds in the middle of the area, but there are a few in Tooele area (South Willow, Clover Springs), around Little Sahara, and across from the state line in Great Basin NP. BooksKelsey's book with a long-winded name, Hiking, Climbing & Exploring Western Utah's Jack Watson's Ibex Country : The Life Stories of Jack Watson & Bob Stinson, History of Ibex, West Desert Sheepmen, ... Mountain Climbing and Fossil Hunting, better known as the Yellow Book, is the most authoritative source for most of the desert area. Jack Watson was one his ancestors, who started sheep-herding in the area of today's Route 6 in 1866. The other Kelsey's book, the Green, a.k.a. Utah Mountaineering Guide, covers most of the high summits of the area, including some not yet described on SP, such as Wah Wah and Frisco.
High In Utah and Hiking Utah Summits are primarily highpointers' guidebooks covering Deseret Peak and Ibapah Peak in good detail. The former book also has chapter on Notch Peak in the Utah Classics section.Call for volunteersI was putting together a new mountain page for Haystack, a 12er in the Deep Creeks, and noticed that there isn't an area or a range for it. I checked a handful of summits listed in the general area on SP, such as Ibapah, Crystal, Notch, Swasey - and found that none of them is attached to a geopgraphical area of Utah West Desert, or to the ranges within. Apparently an area list was created during v2 transition, but ended up scrapped for lack of maintenance.
It looks like time to create West Desert Ranges pages. I promise to do it - albeit a drop at a time - but I will gladly share this work, and the credit for it, with willing members. Drop me a PM!
As it stands now, Antelope Island, the Oquirrhs, and the South-Western mountains all need a separate write-up. Of the area covered on this page, Stansbury, House, and Deep Creek ranges seem ready for their own sub-range pages. And there is plenty of not-yet described mountains and smaller ranges out there. Images
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