The Wasatch Mountains: Utah's backbone

First in a five-part series on the Wasatch Mountains.

Had there been no mountains when Brigham Young rolled into what is now the Great Salt Lake Valley, the LDS Church leader might simply have said, "Drive on."

The valley would be just another barren spot in the Great Basin between the Colorado Rockies and the Sierra Nevada. Without the tons of rock majestically jutting thousands of feet above the valley floor, early settlers would not have had the resources to make life on the frontier viable.

No timber or stone for buildings. No silver or gold for commerce. No game for clothing and food. And most important, no water.

The mountains are not only Utah's backbone but its heart and soul. Within them is the power to sustain life — and to take it away.

"I think everyone in Salt Lake should ask himself what life would be like without the Wasatch Mountains," said Gale Dick, a retired college professor who moved to Utah 44 years ago because of the mountains. "It would be Fresno."

Dick, president of the conservation group Save Our Canyons, recalled a hike in Albion Basin with his wife and 2-year-old son shortly after arriving in the state. "We decided we were in the right place."

Without the Wasatch Mountains, though, this wouldn't be the place.

"It's an interesting question, what Salt Lake would look like without the mountains," said Jim Wood, University of Utah Bureau of Economic and Business Research lead economist. Probably "like Winnemucca."

Geologists say an earthquake fault plane formed the rugged Wasatch Range some 12 million years ago. It stretches roughly 220 miles from Mount Nebo — the range's highest peak — in Juab County to jagged Sheep Rock Point near Soda Springs, Idaho. It is generally considered part of the Rocky Mountains, though that is subject to some debate.

To the naked eye, the range appears to go on forever. But it does not. As much as it has to offer, it is a limited resource.

"This is just a little matchbox of a mountain range," Dick said.

Deseret News graphic Wasatch Mountains Requires Adobe Acrobat.

Still, it is the place to which people gravitate.