ATLAS for University of Utah campus DRAFT January 23, 2010… not quite finished yet… posted so students of Geog3600 have a model of what they could do for their Atlas for schools project.

Atlas of Schools Project - UofU Geography of Utah – y2010

Genevieve Atwood

Chapter 2: Salt Lake County

The University of Utah campus is located in northeastern Salt Lake County.

Salt Lake County is the most populous of Utah’s 29 counties although it is the fifth smallest CHECK THAT. The county covers CHECK THAT square miles, of which CHECK THAT are the bed of Great Salt Lake. Salt Lake County’s boundaries reflect the interaction of human and physical geographies. The name of the county and the name of its most significant landform, Salt Lake Valley, are from the physical feature, Great Salt Lake. The county was among the first established in the provisional State of Deseret on January 31, 1850 with the name Salt Lake County. Great Salt Lake City was created by ordinance in ____, and the University of Deseret in 1859, with Orson Spencer as its first president. The campus was not chosen until CHECK THAT.

The county’s boundaries are classically physical-geography based. The county is bounded by six counties, mostly along mountain ridges. The ridge of the Oquirrh Mountains is the boundary between Salt Lake and Tooele Counties with only minor adjustments that accommodate land ownership patterns. The ridge of the Traverse Mountains to the south forms the boundary between Salt Lake and Utah Counties. Four counties come together along the ridgeline of the Wasatch Range between Little and Cottonwood Canyons. Utah, Summit, Wasatch and Salt Lake are defined by their watersheds. Farther north, near Parley’s Summit, The triple point among Salt Lake Wasatch and Morgan Counties also is demarcated by watersheds. Davis County lies north of the ridgeline that runs from Black Mountain along the crest of the Salt Lake Salient to the valley floor. The old river bed of the Jordan River is the boundary between Salt Lake and Davis Counties to the bed of Great Salt Lake. Similarly, the boundary between Salt Lake and Tooele Counties follows the crest of the Oquirrh Mountains to the valley floor and from there to a prominent rock feature near the shore of Great Salt Lake, Black Rock, the setting of picnics and festivities during 18^th and 19^th centuries. The only portion of the boundary of Salt Lake County that has no physical feature to define it is the northwestern boundary. The pioneers soon recognized that the lake shore of Great Salt Lake migrated dramatically. It was not a fixed geographic feature. It appears that an arbitrary line was drawn to demarcate the northwestern boundary of Salt Lake County adjoining Davis County so that Antelope Island would be totally within Davis County. When the lake is low, some of the Great Salt Lake bed is exposed beyond the county line. When the lake is high, the county has considerable lake front property.

John Wesley Powell in the 1880s was impressed by the logic of the county’s boundaries, that they were based on drainages. He suggested that governments would run better if administrative units were based on drainages rather than on orthogonal geographic grids. File UofU=A02c3-Bowen-SLCounty.jpg shows a computerized model of Salt Lake County, looking south. The logic of the county boundaries is evident: in the 1850s the land had not been surveyed and boundaries along ridgelines were recognizable. The Bowen image shows the channel of the Jordan River running north from the hot springs at the base of the Salt Lake Salient, to Great Salt Lake. Again, this physical boundary was recognizable although not as fixed as a ridgeline. The Traverse Mountains at the south end of the valley form a natural boundary between Salt Lake and Utah Counties, a county line that has become complex by real estate developments of the turn of the 21^st century that straddle the boundary. In this computer-generated digital-elevation-model with topographic relief and imagery draped across it, Great Salt Lake is shown near its historic average elevation. The logic for an arbitrary boundary between Salt Lake and Davis Counties is clear. No physical feature defines the boundary.

The following map files show relationships of Salt Lake County and Utah’s 29 counties.

File UofU-A02b-CountiesOfUtah shows Utah’s 29 counties.

File UofU-A02c-UtahDoT-UtahHighways is a simplified map of Utah’s highways

Five files show Salt Lake County’s boundaries in the context of human and physical geographies.

1) File UofU-A02d01-BowenSaltLakeCounty, discussed above, shows the topography with no boundaries.

2) File UofU-A02d02-USGS-SaltLakeCounty boundaries shows a topographic map of the county

3) File UofU-A02d03-USGS-SaltLakeCounty-DetailOquirrhs shows that short stretches of boundaries do not follow the ridgeline of the Oquirrh exactly because they have been adjusted to conform to township and range grids for land surveys.

4) File UofU-A02-d04-SLCountyBoundary-Simple shows Salt Lake County’s boundaries classified by color:

KEY:

BROWN: Physical: approximately the ridgeline of a mountain range; the boundary of a watershed.

BLUE: Physical: a river

ORANGE: simple geographic reference (lines of latitude or longitude)

YELLOW: checkerboard – township and range, land ownership or survey

PURPLE: arbitrary

For Salt Lake County , most of the boundaries are physical and mountain ridges. None of the boundaries are geographic grids of latitude and longitude. DRAFT... ugly and used yellow versus purple

5) File UofU-A02-d05-CountyBoundariesClassifiedDEM shows Salt Lake County’s boundaries with the same classification, above, drawn across a digital elevation model. This map shows how Salt Lake County’s boundaries are based dominantly on the physical geography of the terrain.