The Raft River Mountains are a mountain range in northern

Box Elder County Box Elder County is a county at the northwestern corner of Utah, United States. As of 2018, the estimated population is 54,950. Its county seat and largest city is Brigham City. The county was named for the box elder trees that abound in the co ...

, Utah, United States. The mountains are located in the Raft River Division of the Minidoka Ranger District of the Sawtooth National Forest. The highest point is Bull Mountain, near the Dunn Benchmark, at , and the ghost town of Yost is on the north-central slopes. Tributaries of the

Raft River The Raft River is a U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map accessed May 4, 2011 tributary of the Snake River located in northern Utah and southern Idaho in the United States. It is part ...

drain the northern slopes of the range to the

Snake River The Snake River is a major river of the greater Pacific Northwest region in the United States. At long, it is the largest tributary of the Columbia River, in turn, the largest North American river that empties into the Pacific Ocean. The Snake ...

then

Columbia River The Columbia River (Upper Chinook: ' or '; Sahaptin: ''Nch’i-Wàna'' or ''Nchi wana''; Sinixt dialect'' '') is the largest river in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. The river rises in the Rocky Mountains of British Columbia, C ...

and Pacific Ocean, while the southern slopes drain to the

Great Salt Lake The Great Salt Lake is the largest saltwater lake in the Western Hemisphere and the eighth-largest terminal lake in the world. It lies in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah and has a substantial impact upon the local climate, particula ...

Geography

Located in the Sawtooth National Forest, the range's montane forest ecoregion is "''surrounded by montane steppes and desert''". The range is oriented in an east–west orientation, and is a portion of the Great Basin Divide and the Basin and Range Province between the

Bonneville Basin 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 temperatur ...

of the

Great Basin The Great Basin is the largest area of contiguous endorheic basin, endorheic watersheds, those with no outlets, in North America. It spans nearly all of Nevada, much of Utah, and portions of California, Idaho, Oregon, Wyoming, and Baja California ...

(south).

Geology

The central mass of the range consists of

Precambrian The Precambrian (or Pre-Cambrian, sometimes abbreviated pꞒ, or Cryptozoic) is the earliest part of Earth's history, set before the current Phanerozoic Eon. The Precambrian is so named because it preceded the Cambrian, the first period of the ...

metamorphic rocks.2448, RAFT RIVER MOUNTAINS FAULT, Utah Geological Survey
/ref> The Elba Quartzite with interlayered schist outcrops along the southern slopes of the range and in the

Grouse Creek Mountains Grouse are a group of birds from the order Galliformes, in the family Phasianidae. Grouse are presently assigned to the tribe Tetraonini (formerly the subfamily Tetraoninae and the family Tetraonidae), a classification supported by mitochondria ...

to the southwest.

Cambrian The Cambrian Period ( ; sometimes symbolized C with bar, Ꞓ) was the first geological period of the Paleozoic Era, and of the Phanerozoic Eon. The Cambrian lasted 53.4 million years from the end of the preceding Ediacaran Period 538.8 million ...

quartzite outcrops in the west part of the range and in the Grouse Creek range and the Goose Creek Mountains to the west. The thinly bedded quartzites have been quarried for building stone in the area.Bryce T. Tripp, ''The Quartzite Building Stone Industry of the Raft River and Grouse Creek,'' Special Study 84, Utah Geological Survey, 1994

Flora and fauna

The range's plants and animals include pines and rodents of the Northern Basin & Range ecoregion of the Columbia Plateau.

Camping and activities

The range's Bull Flat trail leads to Bull Flat, Bull Lake, and Bull Mountain, and passes former mines (the trailhead is near a campground).

Peaks

References

{{Authority control Mountain ranges of Box Elder County, Utah Mountain ranges of Utah Sawtooth National Forest