Rush Lake (also known as Rush Reservoir) is a shallow saline

lake A lake is an area filled with water, localized in a basin, surrounded by land, and distinct from any river or other outlet that serves to feed or drain the lake. Lakes lie on land and are not part of the ocean, although, like the much large ...

in Tooele County in the

U.S. The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

state State may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Literature * ''State Magazine'', a monthly magazine published by the U.S. Department of State * ''The State'' (newspaper), a daily newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina, United States * ''Our S ...

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 ...

. It is a remnant of

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 ...

, an ancient

postglacial The Holocene ( ) is the current geological epoch. It began approximately 11,650 cal years Before Present (), after the Last Glacial Period, which concluded with the Holocene glacial retreat. The Holocene and the preceding Pleistocene togethe ...

inland sea that covered much of the western United States during the

Ice Ages 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 ...

. The lake is a natural impoundment of a stream that drains into the Great Salt Lake. Rush Lake varies in size, evaporating at about per year, although occasional floods refill the lake. The average surface elevation is .

Geography

The lake is located in a broad valley named

Rush Valley Rush Valley is a long north-trending valley in the southeast of Tooele County, Utah. It lies adjacent to and attached to the south of Tooele Valley; the separation point is the low point of the valley at Rush Lake, and lies at the southeast o ...

near the town of Stockton and several miles south of

Tooele Tooele ( ) is a city in Tooele County in the U.S. state of Utah. The population was 35,742 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Tooele County. Located approximately 30 minutes southwest of Salt Lake City, Tooele is known for Tooele Army ...

, and is fed by snowmelt from six mountain ranges. These are the Sheeprock Mountains in the south, the

East Tintic Mountains The East Tintic Mountains are a mountain range in central Juab, Utah, and Tooele counties in Utah, United States on the east margin of the Great Basin just west of the Wasatch Front about south-southeast of Salt Lake City. The community of Eur ...

to the southeast, the Oquirrh Mountains to the east, South Mountain to the north, the Stansbury Mountains to the northwest and west, and the

Onaqui Mountains The Onaqui Mountains are a mountain range in southeastern Tooele County, Utah United States. Description The range is part of a continuous range with the Stansbury Mountains and Sheeprock Mountains. The highest point is Stookey Benchmark, which ...

to the southwest. The runoff from these mountain regions create only intermittent surface flow to the lake, but does reach it via

groundwater Groundwater is the water present beneath Earth's surface in rock and soil pore spaces and in the fractures of rock formations. About 30 percent of all readily available freshwater in the world is groundwater. A unit of rock or an unconsolidated ...

seepage. The highest point in the watershed is Lowe Peak, at . The outflow mostly consists of evaporation, and a very small amount seeps through the sandspit that impounds it from the main Great Salt Lake valley. The lake was isolated from Lake Bonneville approximately 15,000-17,000 years ago after evaporation lowered the lake level to below the natural Stockton Bar barrier between Rush Valley and Tooele Valley. During the ice ages, Rush Valley was merely one of many arms of Lake Bonneville. After Bonneville dried up, Rush Valley contained several

pluvial In geology and climatology, a pluvial is either a modern climate characterized by relatively high precipitation or an interval of time of variable length, decades to thousands of years, during which a climate is characterized by relatively high ...

lakes – Shambip, Smelter, and Rush – of which only Rush Lake remains today.

Climate and ecology

Two major vegetation communities inhabit the Rush Lake watershed. These are

sagebrush Sagebrush is the common name of several woody and herbaceous species of plants in the genus '' Artemisia''. The best known sagebrush is the shrub '' Artemisia tridentata''. Sagebrushes are native to the North American west. Following is an al ...

-grass and pinyon- juniper. The former is found in lower elevations and the valley floor, and the latter is found at higher elevations on the mountains along with other forms of alpine vegetation. The average annual precipitation is , and the annual frost-free season surrounding the lake ranges from 100 to 140 days.

Cattle Cattle (''Bos taurus'') are large, domesticated, cloven-hooved, herbivores. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae and the most widespread species of the genus ''Bos''. Adult females are referred to as cows and adult ma ...

and

sheep Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus '' Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated ...

rangelands take up most of the catchment area. The lake is inhabited by several different species of fish. These include, in order of abundance, Utah chub, carp,

green sunfish The green sunfish (''Lepomis cyanellus'') is a species of freshwater fish in the sunfish family (Centrarchidae) of order Perciformes. A panfish popular with anglers, the green sunfish is also kept as an aquarium fish by hobbyists. They are usu ...

, bluegill,

largemouth bass The largemouth bass (''Micropterus salmoides'') is a carnivorous freshwater gamefish in the Centrarchidae ( sunfish) family, a species of black bass native to the eastern and central United States, southeastern Canada and northern Mexico, bu ...

, channel catfish,

yellow perch The yellow perch (''Perca flavescens''), commonly referred to as perch, striped perch, American perch, American river perch or preacher is a freshwater perciform fish native to much of North America. The yellow perch was described in 1814 by Sam ...

, black crappie, and

black bullhead The black bullhead or black bullhead catfish (''Ameiurus melas'') is a species of bullhead catfish. Like other bullhead catfish, it has the ability to thrive in waters that are low in oxygen, brackish, turbid and/or very warm. It also has barbels ...

. The lake has not been stocked with fish since 1988, when 71,000 largemouth bass fry were released in the lake.

References

External links

*
The Rush Lake Legend

Kiteboarding on Rush Lake in 2011
{{authority control Lakes of Utah Regions of Utah Saline lakes of the United States Lakes of the Great Basin Lakes of Tooele County, Utah