Bonneville Melon Gravel EarthCache
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This feature is located near Celebration park in southern Canyon County. Take Sinker road south to get to this area. You might have to walk the last couple tenths of a mile to get to final location.
Lake Bonneville was the precursor of the Great Salt Lake. The shorelines of this ancient lake can still be seen on the higher slopes of the Wasatch Mountains, more than 984 feet above the present level of the Great Salt Lake. Before the catastrophic Bonneville flood, Lake Bonneville covered an area of more than 19,691 square miles.
Approximately 15,000 years ago Lake Bonneville, a late Pleistocene lake, suddenly discharged an immense volume of water to the north. These flood waters flowed over Red Rock Pass in southeastern Idaho and continued westward across the Snake River Plain generally following the path of the present Snake River. The flood has been estimated to have had a peak discharge of 15 million cubic feet per second. This is to be compared with a maximum historic discharge in the upper Snake River of 72,000 cfs at Idaho Falls in June of 1894. The total flood volume is believed to be about 380 cubic miles.
The flood left a ground record of it’s effects in the Snake River Plain by a variety of depositional and erosional features. One of the most interesting of these effects is melon gravel which can be seen at this location. Melon gravel are large rounded boulders of basalt that were deposited here by the catastrophic floodwaters. The boulders average 3 to 10 feet in diameter. Only several miles of transportation by the floodwaters were sufficient to round the boulders after they were dumped in unsorted deposits up to 300 feet thick. Melon gravel bars are as much as one mile wide by 1.5 miles long.
#1 Do a internet “google” search on Melon Gravel. You will find that the scientist who studied this flood named these rocks, melon gravel after observing a road sign in 1955 that called these boulders "--------- watermelons." Fill in the word in the blank and e-mail me the answer to this question. See below link for further info.
#2 Take a photograph of yourself or your GPS with the melon gravel at this location. – Optional.
#3 How tall is the large melon gravel boulder at this location. This is the large boulder with the “slide” on the east side.
Or go to this link for further information on Melon Gravel and how they were named.
(visit link)
Also on a side note, there are thousands of petroglyphs on the Bonneville melon gravel that make up the landscape of Celebration Park. Each element is considered Indian Art with many dating as far back as 12,000 years. This area offers a fascinating view of the wintering area used by Paleolithic, Archaic, historic Native Americans, and other visitors. See this link for more information about the park. (visit link)
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