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

Salt Lake Valley Salt Lake Valley is a valley in Salt Lake County in the north-central portion of the U.S. state of Utah. It contains Salt Lake City and many of its suburbs, notably Murray, Sandy, South Jordan, West Jordan, and West Valley City; its total po ...

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 ...

Salt Lake A salt lake or saline lake is a landlocked body of water that has a concentration of salts (typically sodium chloride) and other dissolved minerals significantly higher than most lakes (often defined as at least three grams of salt per litre). ...

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 (political), capital and List of cities and towns in Utah, most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the county seat, seat of Salt Lake County, Utah, Sal ...

and Provo metropolitan areas, as well as the

mountain pass A mountain pass is a navigable route through a mountain range or over a ridge. Since many of the world's mountain ranges have presented formidable barriers to travel, passes have played a key role in trade, war, and both Human migration, human a ...

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, and they are much faulted and locally involved in landslides. Lake Bonneville 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 gree ...

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 Lehi (; he, לח"י – לוחמי חרות ישראל ''Lohamei Herut Israel – Lehi'', "Fighters for the Freedom of Israel – Lehi"), often known pejoratively as the Stern Gang,"This group was known to its friends as LEHI and to its enemie ...

and Draper. 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 Camp W. G. Williams, commonly known as Camp Williams, also known as Army Garrison Camp Williams, is a National Guard training site operated by the Utah National Guard. It is located south of Bluffdale, west of Lehi, and north of Saratoga Spri ...

National Guard 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, 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 Wasatch Fault, 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 Breccia () is a rock composed of large angular broken fragments of minerals or Rock (geology), rocks cementation (geology), cemented together by a fine-grained matrix (geology), matrix. The word has its origins in the Italian language, in whi ...

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 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