Economic geology of the Mercur mining district, Utah: Section in Sixteenth Annual Report of the United States Geological Survey to the Secretary of the Interior, 1894-1895: Part II - Papers of an economic character

From the base of the Wasatch Mountains on the east to that of the Sierra Nevada on the west stretches an arid region known to the early geographers as the Great American Desert, but more recently and accurately called the Great Basin, for the reason that it has no external drainage to the ocean. Geological investigation has shown that this region was once occupied by two large and distinct fresh-water seas, which have gradually disappeared by evaporation under the influence of slowly changing climatic conditions, until at the present day they are represented by relatively small saline lakes at the eastern and western extremities of the region, respectively.