As a native Utahn and City Planner, I have always wondered what Utah (and the West as a whole) would have been like if Lake Bonneville was still around when Europeans first wandered through. I’m sure there are countless things that would be different, but here are a few I’ve thought about:
- Would the indigenous populations have been bigger? With that much freshwater, I wonder if the local tribes would have been even more established. This probably wouldn’t have protected them much from westward expansion and disease, but I imagine the presence of a massive freshwater lake would have had a major impact on settlement patterns, trade, and population growth.
- Would other settlers have arrived before the Mormon Pioneers? Instead of Utah being more or less a desert, a giant lake likely would have attracted settlement much sooner. Perhaps the Spanish would have had a larger presence in the area. In that scenario, I wonder if the Mormon Pioneers would have gone somewhere else entirely, because really, they wanted to be left alone. In this version of history, Utah probably doesn’t even exist — at least not in the way it exists today.
- Let’s say the Mormon Pioneers did come to the shores of Lake Bonneville. The map I made follows that idea. I highlighted counties that I think would have been prime areas for settlement, since all of the current major cities along the Wasatch Front would have been under 100+ feet of water.
Areas like Park City (mineral resources), Heber City (large fertile valley), and Levan (located directly between two inlets at the head of a large peninsula, which likely would have been quite habitable) seem like obvious candidates. Morgan County also stands out because it has a decent amount of flat land and would have had a large bay in this scenario.
Ephraim and Richfield are where I think the bulk of Utah’s Mormon population would have ended up. It’s a large fertile valley with direct access to the rest of the lake, and I-70 could still roughly follow its current route connecting Richfield to the rest of the country. I could also see this population center extending south into Piute County.
On the map, I highlighted the counties I think would have become the biggest population centers along the shores of Lake Bonneville, but I’m sure plenty of other areas would have developed as well.
Obviously, a giant freshwater lake in the middle of the West would have changed a lot. I would love to know what others think. How would this have affected westward expansion in the United States? Would Mexico have fought harder to keep the area under its control? I’m a map maker, not a historian, so I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts!