The Traverse Mountains, or sometimes Traverse Range, are an anomalous, geologically complex, east-trending range that separates Salt Lake Valley and

Utah Valley Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to its ...

in Salt Lake and

Utah Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...

counties in the U.S. State of

. Point of the Mountain is colloquially used to refer to the part of this range that separates the

Salt Lake City Salt Lake City (often shortened to Salt Lake and abbreviated as SLC) is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, th ...

and Provo metropolitan areas, as well as the mountain pass at , used by the highways and rail arteries that connect the two areas.

Description

The Traverse Mountains mark the boundary between the Salt Lake and Provo segments of the

Wasatch Fault The Wasatch Fault is an active fault located primarily on the western edge of the Wasatch Mountains in the U.S. states of Utah and Idaho. The fault is about long, stretching from southern Idaho, through northern Utah, before terminating in cen ...

, and they are much faulted and locally involved in landslides.

Lake Bonneville Lake Bonneville was the largest Late Pleistocene paleolake in the Great Basin of western North America. It was a pluvial lake that formed in response to an increase in precipitation and a decrease in evaporation as a result of cooler temperature ...

once covered Salt Lake and Utah Valleys, and shorelines and deposits from the

ice age An ice age is a long period of reduction in the temperature of Earth's surface and atmosphere, resulting in the presence or expansion of continental and polar ice sheets and alpine glaciers. Earth's climate alternates between ice ages and gre ...

lake are now etched into the flanks of the Traverse Mountains. The eastern section of the range (often called Traverse Mountain) is split up between the cities of Lehi and

Draper Draper was originally a term for a retailer or wholesaler of cloth that was mainly for clothing. A draper may additionally operate as a cloth merchant or a haberdasher. History Drapers were an important trade guild during the medieval period, ...

. The Draper portion contains the Suncrest community, while the Lehi portion contains the Traverse Mountain community. Between the two communities, the Flight Park State Recreation Area (state park) sit atop the range. The western section of the range is part of the Camp Williams

National Guard National Guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards. Nat ...

Training Site. Two locations on the far west end of the eastern section of the range are Point of the Mountain and Steep Mountain, .

East Traverse Mountains Mega-landslide

New research suggests that the entirety of the East Traverse Mountains, from the Point of the Mountain to Corner Canyon, is a single mega-landslide, 57 km² in area, that was emplaced in a landslide event between 6.5 to 6.1 million years ago. The East Traverse Mountains previously included the upper portion of the mountains to the south of

Little Cottonwood Canyon Little Cottonwood Canyon lies within the Wasatch-Cache National Forest along the eastern side of the Salt Lake Valley, roughly 15 miles from Salt Lake City, Utah. The canyon is part of Granite, a CDP and "Community Council" designated by Salt L ...

, overlying the 30.5-26 million year old granitic intrusive rocks of the Little Cottonwood stock. A catastrophic landslide event, perhaps triggered by an earthquake along the adjacent

, displaced the

Paleozoic The Paleozoic (or Palaeozoic) Era is the earliest of three geologic eras of the Phanerozoic Eon. The name ''Paleozoic'' ( ;) was coined by the British geologist Adam Sedgwick in 1838 by combining the Greek words ''palaiós'' (, "old") and ' ...

sedimentary rocks about 16-17 kilometers (~10 miles) west to its current location. There are several lines of evidence that support this idea.

Pseudotachylyte Pseudotachylyte (sometimes written as pseudotachylite) is an extremely fine-grained to glassy, dark, cohesive rock occurring as veinsTrouw, R.A.J., C.W. Passchier, and D.J. Wiersma (2010) ''Atlas of Mylonites- and related microstructures.'' Spring ...

zones in the area, caused by intense frictional heat, mark the landslide's path. Extensive brecciation of bedrock throughout the East Traverse Mountains are evidence of an extremely damaging event that affected the whole mountain. Additionally, a brecciated remnant of the landslide was preserved near Box Elder Peak. Finally, there are pebble dikes on the East Traverse Mountains, which include pieces of igneous rock that match those in pebble dikes from the Little Cottonwood stock in age, texture, and mineralogy. Thus, the pebble dikes in Little Cottonwood Canyon represent the lower half of the

hydrothermal Hydrothermal circulation in its most general sense is the circulation of hot water (Ancient Greek ὕδωρ, ''water'',Liddell, H.G. & Scott, R. (1940). ''A Greek-English Lexicon. revised and augmented throughout by Sir Henry Stuart Jones. with th ...

system, while the upper half of the system is represented by the pebble dikes that are lodged in the rocks that now make up the East Traverse Mountains before the landslide. Several million years later, the landslide occurred, carrying the upper half of the granite-bearing pebble dikes with it. The slide probably occurred in this area due to hydrothermal alteration caused by the Little Cottonwood intrusion that weakened the overlying rocks.

References

External links

* {{commons category-inline, Traverse Mountains Mountain ranges of Utah Hang gliding Mountain ranges of Salt Lake County, Utah Mountain ranges of Utah County, Utah Mountain ranges of the Great Basin

Description

East Traverse Mountains Mega-landslide

See also

References

External links