Cisco's Sonar

Large Western Lakes

By Bryce Nielson, The Cisco Kid

I have always been fascinated with large, natural, bodies of water.  In North America, the Great Lakes were formed by glacial action along with thousands of other lakes in the Northeast U. S. and Canada.  These lakes are huge due to the impact of millions of years of erosion from the ice ages.

In the western U.S., the largest freshwater lake is Flathead Lake and of course, the salty Great Salt Lake.  Recently, I visited two natural lakes in Nevada that are both slightly larger than Bear Lake.  Lake Tahoe is the largest and deepest.  A scenic lake surrounded by granite peaks and pines.  It was created by faulting.  As the Sierra Mountains were being pushed up, fault lines pulled them apart, creating a depression that through time filled up with water.  The water came from over sixty small mountain streams that cascaded out of the surrounding mountains into the valley.  As I drove around it there were 100’s of permanent docks and no sign of lake fluctuation.  This is because Tahoe is over 1000 feet deep and never freezes.  It doesn’t fluctuate because as the water rises it overflows into the Truckee River. 

This river then flows downward into the Lahontan basin where Pyramid Lake is located.  This terminal lake is dependent on the Truckee River flow for its elevation.  Years ago, most of the river was diverted into the Carson Basin for irrigation.  As a result, Pyramid Lake desiccated to a point where it was becoming too salty to support fish.  No one cared because it was on an Indian reservation in the desert.  Pyramid does not freeze because of depth and salinity.  The Pyramid Lake Tribe went to court and got flows reestablished and now the lake is coming up and fish are thriving.

When comparing these two lakes to Bear Lake, they are similar but not alike, only in size.  Bear Lake was created by faulting, creating a large depression that filled with water, like Tahoe.  Over the past, it has sometimes has shared water with the Bear River, which passes it but does not flow in and out of it.   Like Pyramid, humans thirst for irrigation water has impacted its natural elevation.  Unlike Tahoe and Pyramid, it will continue to fluctuate, bridled by the Bear River Compact.

The value of the large natural, freshwater, lakes cannot be overestimated.  They are ours to use for recreation and other things, but they must be cherished for what they visually provide to the human consciousness.