What happened to December? It seems like just a couple of weeks ago that I posted the Late Autumn piece, and now it’s already January 2024. Holidays – good and bad.

Well, on Friday, December 29, I took the day off from work and drove up to Antelope Island to photograph some bison. There is a fairly large herd on the island, but I don’t think the bison gods were smiling on me that day. It’s the first time I’ve ever been to Antelope Island and not seen the bison. That’s sort of like going to New York City and not seeing a pizza joint. 🤣

And where is Antelope Island? It is an island in the western portion of the Great Salt Lake near the south end of the lake. There is a causeway to get to the island from Syracuse, Utah. Including the drive around the island looking for bison, it was about a 160 mile (257.5 km) round trip from my place.

So, if it’s Antelope Island, why wasn’t I photographing antelope there? I didn’t see any antelope either. The only wildlife I saw was a squirrel and a few birds. I saw tons of relatively fresh bison poop (at least not older that 24 hours), but no frickin’ bison. So, I decided to change plans and take some landscape photos.

Antelope Island is largest island in the Great Salt Lake – a tiny remnant of the ancient Lake Bonneville from the last ice age. The Great Salt Lake is a small inland sea, and it’s extremely salty — too salty for any fish. The major animals that live in the lake per se are tiny brine shrimp. Even though the Great Salt Lake is a tiny portion of what’s left of Lake Bonneville, it is still the largest lake west of the Mississippi River. The Lake is situated in the northern half of Utah and is part of the Great Basin – an area in North America in which there is no drainage to the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico or the Pacific Ocean. The Salt Lake is salty because there is no external drainage.

In 1893, twelve bison (American buffalo) were introduced to the island in an attempt to help conserve what was left of the once massive bison herds that roamed much of North America. Today that herd is now in the hundreds; and I saw NONE! Antelope Island is home to many other mammals – antelope, mule deer, bobcats, coyotes, badgers, and porcupines. As Antelope Island is surrounded by extremely salty water, the animals that are there are unique to the island. It supports a very rich bird population as well.

But today, I want to concentrate a bit on the geology and geography of the island. As I mentioned earlier, the Great Salt Lake is a remnant of ancient Lake Bonneville. So, much of the island was underwater for millenia, and that has produced some interesting geology. The island contains some of the oldest rock in Utah and on earth, and it also contains some of the youngest rock in Utah. For the geology students here, Antelope Island is part of Great Basin, which consists of numerous mountain ranges and valleys. The valleys were sunk from large fault systems that produced major earthquakes over the last millennia. The mountains are the older bedrock. Some of these rocks – slate, dolomite, diamictite and migmatite gneiss were formed anywhere from 3.5 billion to 1.7 billion years ago. 

Other rocks are much younger, formed around 100 million years ago during the mountain building process in the Great Basin. Because the island was underwater for many ages, some of these oldest rocks have survived the weathering process. The island’s youngest rocks were only formed between 19 and 1.6 million years ago. There were laid down from erosion of the island’s mountains and consist of pebbles, clay, sandstone, limestone and other conglomerate. For those of you who are really interested in the geology of the Great Basin and Antelope Island in particular, here is a great publication: https://ugspub.nr.utah.gov/publications/misc_pubs/MP-88-2.pdf

So, while I was quite disappointed in not catching any wildlife, I did stumble across an incredibly diverse geologic area. And hey, we make the best of what Mother Nature gives us. 

Hope you have enjoyed the geologic “tour” of Antelope Island. And I hope 2024 brings us all much happiness! As always, thank you for stopping by.