[NASA] What Lake Bonneville Left Behind

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Earth Observatory

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3. What Lake Bonneville Left Behind

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The rugged terrain of the Silver Island Mountains and Crater Island rises above the pale playa and bright salt flats of former Lake Bonneville. The image was acquired with the

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(Operational Land Imager) on

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on June 4, 2026, and overlaid on a

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.

NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

At its peak, ancient

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would have been a sight to behold. Nearly as large as Lake Michigan, the Ice Age lake spread across much of western Utah and parts of Nevada and Idaho. When it eventually receded, it left behind flat, bright

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and salt flats rich with minerals—a landscape that would later serve as the setting for feats of engineering and technological ingenuity, as well as epic tales of exploration and desperation.

Lake Bonneville began forming about 55,000 years ago during a cool, wet *******, when volcanic eruptions in what’s now southeastern Idaho

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, causing water to gather in Gem Valley and other basins to the south. For tens of thousands of years, a natural dam at

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helped confine the lake.

Then, about 18,000 years ago, water breached that dam, unleashing a torrent that entered the Columbia River system. Over a six-week *******, amid one of North America’s

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, lake levels plummeted by more than 350 feet (105 meters). As the climate warmed and dried in subsequent millennia, the lake shrank dramatically, leaving remnants that include today’s Great Salt Lake, Utah Lake, and Sevier Lake.

Lake Bonneville may be gone, but its imprint on the region’s landscape remains—even in satellite imagery. In this image (below) captured by the

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(Operational Land Imager) on the NASA-USGS

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satellite, bathtub-like rings and wave-cut terraces trace the position of former shorelines. The dried lakebed—where fine-grained clay, marl, and sandy

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settled out of the water—appears pale in comparison to the darker, rockier, more vegetated surroundings.

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NASA scientists analyzed the terrain in this part of Utah when testing technologies that will be used on NASA’s

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to Venus. This image was acquired with the

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(Operational Land Imager) on

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on June 4, 2026.

NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

In deep parts of the basin, where runoff and groundwater still pool, bright deposits of

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coat the land surfaces, forming

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. These remarkably flat surfaces are the product of water gradually evaporating and concentrating minerals to produce brines and hard mineral crusts, typically including halite and gypsum, along with potassium- and magnesium-bearing salts. Brines and deposits like these—particularly of

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, which is used as a fertilizer—have long made the playa a target for mining, as seen in the rectangular evaporation ponds above and below.

In contrast, the darker, more rugged terrain—including the Silver Island Mountains, the Newfoundland Mountains, and the Pilot Range—that rises above the playas is built from layers of erosion-resistant

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and

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bedrock that is hundreds of millions of years old. These mountains also contain younger igneous and

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rocks that formed when magma intruded into the ancient sedimentary sequence.

Crater Island, for instance, is composed of sedimentary rocks, including silica-rich sandstones and quartzites that formed as sands accumulated in a shallow ocean, as well as intrusions of quartz monzonite, granites, and other

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rocks. Periods of crustal stretching later produced the

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that define the landscape.

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This animation shows the descent over Crater Island, Utah, of the camera system that will one day fly aboard NASA’s

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to Venus. It was created by stitching together 37 infrared images captured during

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on June 24, 2026.

Malin Space Science Systems/NASA/Jay Friedlander

Mapping geological distinctions like this took center stage in June 2026 when NASA scientists and engineers working with the agency’s

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came to Crater Island—a place they call “Venus on Earth”—to

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the design of a set of cameras and a package of instruments that will eventually descend through the thick atmosphere of Venus and photograph mountains at scales finer than these Landsat images. During a 60-minute descent, the

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will capture near-infrared images, measure the atmospheric chemistry, and explore the environment of a world in unprecedented detail.

During the rehearsals at Crater Island, the camera system took hundreds of images of various rock formations, including iron-rich and silica-rich rock units, while suspended from a helicopter as it descended toward the surface. Using only the images acquired by DAVINCI’s camera systems, the team made three-dimensional maps of the area consistent with existing

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, giving the scientists confidence that they will be able to map the geology of an analogous mountainous region on Venus that DAVINCI will study, an area called

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.

Other epic adventures have played out on and around Lake Bonneville’s playas, as well. The flat, smooth surfaces have often been the setting for new land speed records. In 1960,

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became the first American to break the 400-miles-per-hour (640 kilometers-per-hour) barrier, hitting

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(654.36 kilometers per hour) in a

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on the Bonneville Salt Flats. The feat temporarily earned him the nickname

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People mine minerals from the Bonneville Salt Flats and use its flat surface to pursue land speed records. This image was acquired with the

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(Operational Land Imager) on

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on June 4, 2026.

NASA Earth Observatory/Michala Garrison

More recently, in August 2026, Andy Green, the first person to break the sound barrier on land,

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for the fastest land speed in a hydrogen-fueled internal-combustion vehicle, reaching 406.320 miles per hour (653.909 kilometers per hour). By burning hydrogen rather than gasoline, the

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produced no carbon dioxide.

Nearly two centuries earlier, in August 1846, members of the ill-fated

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also passed along the southern edge of Crater Island. As part of a shortcut toward

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, they journeyed from

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, past

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, and toward

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. However, in an ominous sign of challenges to come, their heavy wagons broke through the thin salt crust and became mired in underlying mud, slowing them down and prompting them to

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several wagons in the desert.

NASA Earth Observatory images by Michala Garrison, using Landsat data from the 

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. Story by Adam Voiland.

Downloads

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June 4, 2026

JPEG (14.24 MB)

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June 4, 2026: Oblique map

JPEG (2.87 MB)

References & Resources

• The Center for Land Use Interpretation,
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  . Accessed August 21, 2026.
• Garvin, J.B., et al. (2022)
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  . The Planetary Science Journal, 3(117).
• Hill Air Force Base (2026, January 28)
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  . Accessed August 21, 2026.
• Idaho State University,
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  . Accessed August 21, 2026.
• NASA (2026, July 14)
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  . Accessed August 21, 2026.
• NASA,
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  . Accessed August 21, 2026.
• NASA Earth Observatory (2018, February 25)
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  . Accessed August 21, 2026.
• National Park Service,
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  . Accessed August 21, 2026.
• Utah Geological Survey,
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  . Accessed August 21, 2026
• Utah Geological Survey,
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  . Accessed August 21, 2026.
• Utah Geological Survey,
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  . Accessed August 21, 2026.
• Utah Department of Natural Resources (1990)
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  . Accessed August 21, 2026.

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