Tule Valley (also known as White Valley) is a valley in Millard County,

Utah Utah is a landlocked state in the Mountain states, Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It is one of the Four Corners states, sharing a border with Arizona, Colorado, and New Mexico. It also borders Wyoming to the northea ...

, United States.

Description

The valley is a north-south trending

endorheic An endorheic basin ( ; also endoreic basin and endorreic basin) is a drainage basin that normally retains water and allows no outflow to other external bodies of water (e.g. rivers and oceans); instead, the water drainage flows into permanent ...

valley within the

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

(geographically),

Great Basin Desert The Great Basin Desert is part of the Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and the Wasatch Range in the western United States. The desert is a geographical region that largely overlaps the Great Basin shrub steppe defined by the World Wildlife ...

(ecologically), and

Basin and Range Province The Basin and Range Province is a vast United States physiographic region, physiographic region covering much of the inland Western United States and Northern Mexico, northwestern Mexico. It is defined by unique basin and range topography, charac ...

(

tectonic Tectonics ( via Latin ) are the processes that result in the structure and properties of the Earth's crust and its evolution through time. The field of ''planetary tectonics'' extends the concept to other planets and moons. These processes ...

ally) of west-central Utah.Schneider, Bill and Ann Seifert, ''Hiking Utah,'' Falcon, 2005, p. 102
It is bounded on the west by the Confusion Range, on the east by the House Range, to the north by the Middle Range and the Great Salt Lake Desert, and the south by Wah Wah Valley and the

Wah Wah Mountains The Wah Wah Mountains are a north-south trending Mountain range, range in Iron County, Utah, Iron, Beaver County, Utah, Beaver, and Millard County, Utah, Millard counties in west-central Utah, United States part of the larger Basin and Range Provi ...

. The central part of the valley has several knolls, the largest of which is Coyote Knolls. The White Valley name comes from the abundance of white rocks noted by James H. Simpson in 1859.Van Cott, J. W., 1990, Utah Place Names, These rocks are mostly Lake Bonneville

marl Marl is an earthy material rich in carbonate minerals, Clay minerals, clays, and silt. When Lithification, hardened into rock, this becomes marlstone. It is formed in marine or freshwater environments, often through the activities of algae. M ...

s in the valley floor.

Geographic features

Tule Valley's most prominent feature may be Coyote Springs, an important spring system for local wildlife and

feral A feral (; ) animal or plant is one that lives in the wild but is descended from domesticated individuals. As with an introduced species, the introduction of feral animals or plants to non-native regions may disrupt ecosystems and has, in som ...

horse The horse (''Equus ferus caballus'') is a domesticated, one-toed, hoofed mammal. It belongs to the taxonomic family Equidae and is one of two extant subspecies of ''Equus ferus''. The horse has evolved over the past 45 to 55 mi ...

s, which populate the valley. It is also used as a gateway to viewing and traveling toward the base of

Notch Peak Notch Peak is a distinctive summit located on Sawtooth Mountain in the House Range, west of Delta, Utah, United States. The peak and the surrounding area are part of the Notch Peak Wilderness Study Area (WSA). Bristlecone pines, estimated t ...

, a

carbonate rock Carbonate rocks are a class of sedimentary rocks composed primarily of carbonate minerals. The two major types are limestone, which is composed of calcite or aragonite (different crystal forms of CaCO3), and Dolomite (rock), dolomite rock (also kn ...

cliff ( of which is pure vertical drop), the tallest carbonate cliff in North America. The name " Tule" is a reference to a swamp plant that probably was found at Coyote Springs during the early exploration of the valley. The valley itself is very isolated and only has one paved road through its southern end, U.S. Route 6/

U.S. Route 50 U.S. Route 50 or U.S. Highway 50 (US 50) is a major east–west route of the U.S. Highway system, stretching from Interstate 80 (I-80) in West Sacramento, California, to Maryland Route 528 (MD 528) in Ocean City, Maryland, on the Atlantic ...

. There are no permanent human residents of the valley, though

shepherd A shepherd is a person who tends, herds, feeds, or guards flocks of sheep. Shepherding is one of the world's oldest occupations; it exists in many parts of the globe, and it is an important part of Pastoralism, pastoralist animal husbandry. ...

s are known to populate it in the spring. The center of the valley is a large playa, the place where all precipitation from the drainage basin collects, since it is an isolated basin and watershed. This is the location of the lowest point in

Millard County, Utah Millard County ( ) is a county in the U.S. state of Utah. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 12,975. Its county seat is Fillmore, and the largest city is Delta. History The Utah Territory legislature created the county ...

. The Ibex Crags offer "world class" bouldering to climbers. They are located on the eastern edge of the

Geology

The geology of Tule Valley consists of

Quaternary The Quaternary ( ) is the current and most recent of the three periods of the Cenozoic Era in the geologic time scale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS), as well as the current and most recent of the twelve periods of the ...

alluvial Alluvium (, ) is loose clay, silt, sand, or gravel that has been deposited by running water in a stream bed, on a floodplain, in an alluvial fan or beach, or in similar settings. Alluvium is also sometimes called alluvial deposit. Alluvium is ...

sediment Sediment is a solid material that is transported to a new location where it is deposited. It occurs naturally and, through the processes of weathering and erosion, is broken down and subsequently sediment transport, transported by the action of ...

s punctuated by chalky white

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( ; referred to colloquially as the ''ice age, Ice Age'') is the geological epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fin ...

marls. The valley is a true

graben In geology, a graben () is a depression (geology), depressed block of the Crust (geology), crust of a planet or moon, bordered by parallel normal faults. Etymology ''Graben'' is a loan word from German language, German, meaning 'ditch' or 't ...

in the sense that it is down-faulted by

normal fault In geology, a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity in a volume of rock across which there has been significant displacement as a result of rock-mass movements. Large faults within Earth's crust result from the action of plate tectonic ...

s on both sides of the valley. The knolls in the valley are horsts of

Silurian The Silurian ( ) is a geologic period and system spanning 23.5 million years from the end of the Ordovician Period, at million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Devonian Period, Mya. The Silurian is the third and shortest period of t ...

Devonian The Devonian ( ) is a period (geology), geologic period and system (stratigraphy), system of the Paleozoic era (geology), era during the Phanerozoic eon (geology), eon, spanning 60.3 million years from the end of the preceding Silurian per ...

carbonates.

Tule Valley watershed

The Tule Valley hydrologic unit is an area of several Utah valleys and ridgelines of the Basin and Range Province. The

watershed's volume of surface water averages .

References

External links

{{Geographic Location , Northwest = Snake Valley ( Deep Creek Mountains) , North = Fish Range Fla

( Fish Springs National Wildlife Refuge, Fish Springs Range) , Northeast = ( Middle Range, north of Marjum Canyonbr>
, West = Blind Valley/Barn Hill

&
Snake Valley ( Confusion Range) , Centre = basins (& demarcating ranges)
bordering the Tule Valley , East= House Range & ( Whirlwind Valley) , Southwest = , South = Wah Wah Valley (

Mountains A mountain is an elevated portion of the Earth's crust, generally with steep sides that show significant exposed bedrock. Although definitions vary, a mountain may differ from a plateau in having a limited summit area, and is usually higher ...