The Weber River ( ) is a long river of northern
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 ...
, United States. It begins in the northwest of the
Uinta Mountains
The Uinta Mountains ( ) are an east-west trending chain of mountains in northeastern Utah extending slightly into southern Wyoming in the United States. As a subrange of the Rocky Mountains, they are unusual for being the highest range in the con ...
and empties into 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 ...
. The Weber River was named for American fur trapper
John Henry Weber
John Henry Weber (1779–1859) was an American fur trader and explorer. Weber was active in the early years of the fur trade, exploring territory in the Rocky Mountains and areas in the current state of Utah. The Weber River, Weber State Uni ...
.
The Weber River rises in the northwest of the Uinta Mountains, at the foot of peaks including
Bald Mountain Bald Mountain may refer to:
Geographic locations in the United States
* Bald Mountain (Heceta Island), Alaska
* Bald Mountain (California), a name given to over fifty summits in California
** Bald Mountain (Humboldt County)
* , a peak near Littl ...
, Notch Mountain, and Mount Watson. It passes by
Oakley, and fills the reservoir of
Rockport Lake, then turns north, receiving the flow of major tributaries Silver Creek and at
Coalville
Coalville is an industrial town in the district of North West Leicestershire, Leicestershire in the East Midlands of England, with a population at the 2011 census of 34,575. It lies on the A511 trunk road between Leicester and Burton upon Tr ...
, Chalk Creek. Coalville is also at the upper end of Echo Reservoir; Below the reservoir, the river passes
Henefer, turns more westerly, and then passes
Morgan, where it receives
East Canyon Creek
East Canyon State Park is a state park of Utah, USA, featuring a reservoir. The park is located northeast of Salt Lake City in Morgan County, Utah.
Park facilities
Located in a narrow-walled canyon, East Canyon State Park is at an elevation ...
. Issuing out of the mountains at
Uintah at the mouth of
Weber Canyon
Weber Canyon is a canyon in the Wasatch Range near Ogden, Utah, through which the Weber River flows west toward the Great Salt Lake. It is fed by 13 tributary creeks and is long.
History
Weber Canyon is, historically, one of the more importa ...
, it turns north again where it is joined by the
Ogden River
The Ogden River is a long river in Weber County. Utah, United States.
Description
The Ogden River's three forks (North, Central, and South) begin in the Wasatch Range in Weber County and converge at Pineview Reservoir, near Huntsville. The r ...
west of
Ogden. The combined stream meanders across mostly-flat land, entering mud flats near where it empties into the Great Salt Lake, contributing about 25 percent of the total water entering the lake.
Among the fish to be found in the river are
brook
A brook is a small river or natural stream of fresh water. It may also refer to:
Computing
*Brook, a programming language for GPU programming based on C
*Brook+, an explicit data-parallel C compiler
*BrookGPU, a framework for GPGPU programming ...
,
brown
Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black. In the RGB color model used ...
,
Bonneville cutthroat
The Bonneville cutthroat trout (''Oncorhynchus clarkii utah'') is a subspecies of cutthroat trout native to tributaries of the Great Salt Lake and Sevier Lake. Most of the fish's current and historic range is in Utah, but they are also found in ...
and stocked
rainbow trout
The rainbow trout (''Oncorhynchus mykiss'') is a species of trout native to cold-water tributaries of the Pacific Ocean in Asia and North America. The steelhead (sometimes called "steelhead trout") is an anadromous (sea-run) form of the coasta ...
, and
mountain whitefish
The mountain whitefish (''Prosopium williamsoni'') is one of the most widely distributed salmonid fish of western North America. It is found from the Mackenzie River drainage in Northwest Territories, Canada south through western Canada and ...
.
[William F. Sigler and John W. Sigler, ''Fishes of Utah'' (University of Utah Press, 1996), pp. 9–10]
The Weber has long been used for irrigation and is part of the
United States Bureau of Reclamation
The Bureau of Reclamation, and formerly the United States Reclamation Service, is a federal agency under the U.S. Department of the Interior, which oversees water resource management, specifically as it applies to the oversight and opera ...
's Weber Basin Project.
Among the dams on the Weber are Wanship Dam on
Rockport Reservoir
Rockport Reservoir, also called Wanship Reservoir, is a reservoir along the Weber River within the Rockport State Park in southwestern Summit County, Utah, United States.
__TOC__
Description
Rockport Reservoir is located just south of the t ...
(completed 1957) and
Echo Dam
Echo Dam is a dam in Summit County, Utah, standing about north of Coalville and creating Echo Reservoir.
The earthen dam was constructed in 1931 by the United States Bureau of Reclamation. It has a height of , impounding the water of the Weber ...
(completed 1931). The watershed totals about .
The Weber River is also home to a rare plant species
Stephanomeria occultata
''Stephanomeria occultata'' is a species of rhizomes flowering plant in the family Asteraceae
The family Asteraceae, alternatively Compositae, consists of over 32,000 known species of flowering plants in over 1,900 genera within the order A ...
, also known as Disguised or Hidden Wirelettuce, which is endemic to rocky slopes and margins along the corridor (B. Wellard & J.W. Baker 2018).
See also
*
List of rivers of Utah
This is a list of rivers in the U.S. state of Utah in the United States, sorted by drainage basin, watershed.
Colorado River
The Colorado River is a major river in the Western United States, emptying into the Gulf of California. Rivers are list ...
*
List of rivers in the Great Basin
The list of rivers of the Great Basin identifies waterways named as rivers, regardless of the amount of their flow.
__TOC__
Significant rivers
The Great Basin is a series of contiguous watersheds, bounded on the west by watersheds of the ...
References
*
*Wellard, B., & Baker, J. (2018). Stephanomeria occultata (Asteraceae: Cichorieae), a New Species of Wirelettuce from Northern Utah, and a Key to all Perennial Wirelettuce. Systematic Botany, 43(2), 595–601.
External links
*
{{Authority control
Rivers of Utah
Features of the Uinta Mountains
Rivers of Weber County, Utah
Rivers of Summit County, Utah
Rivers of Morgan County, Utah
Tributaries of the Great Salt Lake