What's this?

[captpackrat]

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=40.684543,-113.912086&spn=0.243639,0.317677&t=k&hl=en

Anyone have any idea what this is? It's near Salt Lake City (along I-80 just east of the Utah/Nevada border.)

Comments

Well...

[spaceroo.livejournal.com]

The white deposit covering the area is salt. That area was/is used as an overflow for the Great Salt Lake. (I remember reading some years ago how it was flooding regularly, so pumping stations were set up to distribute the extra water over a flat area of desert to the west.)

If I had to take a wild guess I'd say the geometric shapes are shallow berms or dikes, possibly set up to concentrate the water for salt harvesting. You can see similar shapes at the southern end of the Salt Lake itself.

Looks like

[whiffert.livejournal.com]

an airport?

Click on the MAP

Looks like

[whiffert.livejournal.com]

an airport?

Click on the MAP button and see that it is indeed an airport. The rest of the lines on the white part (snow? salt?)I'm not sure about.

[dakhun.livejournal.com]

There is this double-line going east-west some distance below the highway. On a roadmap (an actual paper one) the area south of that is labelled Wendover Range (no public access). On Google's

[whitetail.livejournal.com]

Brine (salt) mine. A very BIG one.