of all, Great Salt Lake, is maintained by the waters of the Wasatch and associated plateaus. No lakes occur south of Owens in the W. and Sevier in the E. (39°); evaporation below these limits is supreme. Most of the small closed basins, however, contain “playas,” or alkali mud flats, that are overflowed when the tributary streams are supplied with storm water.
Save where irrigation has reclaimed small areas, the whole region is a vast desert, though locally only some of the interior plains are known as “deserts.” Such are the Great Salt Lake and Carson deserts in the north, the Mohave and Colorado and Amargosa (Death Valley) deserts of the south-west. Straggling forests, mainly of conifers, characterize the high plateaus of central Utah. The lowlands and the lower mountains, especially southward, are generally treeless. Cottonwoods line the streams, salt-loving vegetation margins the bare playas, low bushes and scattered bunch-grass grow over the lowlands, especially in the north. Gray desert plants, notably cactuses and other thorny plants, partly replace in the south the bushes of the north. Except on the scattered oases, where irrigation from springs and mountain streams has reclaimed small patches, the desert is barren and forbidding in the extreme. There are broad plains covered with salt and alkali, and others supporting only scattered bunch grass, sage bush, cactus and other arid land plants. There are stony wastes, or alluvial fans, where mountain streams emerge upon the plains, in time of flood, bringing detritus in their torrential courses from the mountain canyons and depositing it along the mountain base. The barrenness extends into the mountains themselves, where there are bare rock cliffs, stony slopes and a general absence of vegetation. With increasing altitude vegetation becomes more varied and abundant, until the tree limit is reached; then follows a forest belt, which in the highest mountains is limited above by cold as it is below by aridity.
The successive explorations of B. L. E. Bonneville, J. C. Frémont and Howard Stansbury (1806–1863) furnished a general knowledge of the hydrographic features and geological lacustrine history of the Great Basin, and this knowledge was rounded out by the field work of the U.S. Geological Survey from 1879 to 1883, under the direction of Grove Karl Gilbert. The mountains are composed in great part of Paleozoic strata, often modified by vulcanism and greatly denuded and sculptured by wind and water erosion. The climate in late geologic time was very different from that which prevails to-day. In the Pleistocene period many large lakes were formed within the Great Basin; especially, by the fusion of small catchment basins, two great confluent bodies of water—Lake Lahontan (in the Nevada basin) and Lake Bonneville (in the Utah basin). The latter, the remnants of which are represented to-day by Great Salt, Sevier and Utah Lakes, had a drainage basin of some 54,000 sq. m.
See G. K. Gilbert in Wheeler Survey, U.S. Geographical Survey West of the Hundredth Meridian, vol. iii.; Clarence King and others in the Report of the Fortieth Parallel Survey (U.S. Geol. Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel); G. K. Gilbert’s Lake Bonneville (U.S. Geological Survey, Monographs, No. 1, 1890), also I. C. Russell’s Lake Lahontan (Same, No. 11, 1885), with references to other publications of the Survey. For reference to later geological literature, and discussion of the Basin Ranges, see J. E. Spurr, Bull. Geol. Soc. Amer. vol. 12, 1901, p. 217; and G. D. Louderback, same, vol. 15, 1904, p. 280; also general bibliographies issued by the U.S. Geol. Survey (e.g. Bull. 301, 372 and 409).
GREAT BEAR LAKE, an extensive sheet of fresh water in
the north-west of Canada, between 65° and 67° N., and 117° and
123° W. It is of very irregular shape, has an estimated area
of 11,200 sq. m., a depth of 270 ft., and is upwards of 200 ft.
above the sea. It is 175 m. in length, and from 25 to 45 in
breadth, though the greatest distance between its northern and
southern arms is about 180 m. The Great Bear river discharges
its waters into the Mackenzie river. It is full of fish, and the
neighbouring country, though barren and uncultivated, contains
quantities of game.
GREAT CIRCLE. The circle in which a sphere is cut by a
plane is called a “great circle,” when the cutting plane passes
through the centre of sphere. Treating the earth as a sphere,
the meridians of longitude are all great circles. Of the parallels
of latitude, the equator only is a great circle. The shortest line
joining any two points is an arc of a great circle. For “great
circle sailing” see Navigation.
GREAT FALLS, a city and the county-seat of Cascade county, Montana, U.S.A., 99 m. (by rail) N.E. of Helena, on the S. bank of the Missouri river, opposite the mouth of the Sun river, at an altitude of about 3300 ft. It is 10 m. above the Great Falls of the Missouri, from which it derives its name. Pop. (1890) 3979; (1900) 14,930, of whom 4692 were foreign-born; (1910 census) 13,948. It has an area of about 8 sq. m. It is served by the Great Northern and the Billings & Northern (Chicago, Burlington & Quincy system) railways. The city has a splendid park system of seven parks (about 530 acres) with 15 m. of boulevards.[1] Among the principal buildings are a city hall,
court house, high school, commercial college, Carnegie library,
the Columbus Hospital and Training School for Nurses (under
the supervision of the Sisters of Charity), and the Montana
Deaconess hospital. There is a Federal land office in the city.
Great Falls lies in the midst of a region exceptionally rich in
minerals—copper, gold, silver, lead, iron, gypsum, limestone,
sapphires and bituminous coal being mined in the neighbourhood.
Much grain is grown in the vicinity, and the city is an important
shipping point for wool, live-stock and cereals. Near Great
Falls the Missouri river, within 712 m., contracts from a width of
about 900 to 300 yds. and falls more than 500 ft., the principal
falls being the Black Eagle Falls (50 ft.), from which power is
derived for the city’s street railway and lighting plant, the
beautiful Rainbow Falls (48 ft.) and Great Falls (92 ft.). Giant
Spring Fall, about 20 ft. high, is a cascade formed by a spring
on the bank of the river near Rainbow Falls. The river furnishes
very valuable water-power, partly utilized by large manufacturing
establishments, including flour mills, plaster mills, breweries,
iron works, mining machinery shops, and smelting and reduction
works. The Boston & Montana copper smelter is one of the
largest in the world; it has a chimney stack 506 ft. high, and in
1908 employed 1200 men in the smelter and 2500 in its mining
department. Great Falls ranked second (to Anaconda) among
the cities of the state in the value of the factory product of 1905,
which was $13,291,979, showing an increase of 42.4% since 1900.
The city owns and operates its water-supply system. Great Falls
was settled in 1884, and was chartered as a city in 1888.
GREAT HARWOOD, an urban district in the Darwen parliamentary division of Lancashire, England, 412 m. N.E. of Blackburn, on the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway. Pop. (1901) 12,015. It is of modern growth, a township of cotton operatives, with large collieries in the vicinity. An agricultural society is also maintained.
GREATHEAD, JAMES HENRY (1844–1896), British engineer, was born at Grahamstown, Cape Colony, on the 6th of August 1844. He migrated to England in 1859, and in 1864 was a pupil of P. W. Barlow, from whom he became acquainted with the shield system of tunnelling with which his name is especially associated. Barlow, indeed, had a strong belief in the shield, and was the author of a scheme for facilitating the traffic of London by the construction of underground railways running in cast-iron tubes constructed by its aid. To show what the method could do, it was resolved to make a subway under the Thames near the Tower, but the troubles encountered by Sir M. I. Brunel in the Thames Tunnel, where also a shield was employed, made engineers hesitate to undertake the subway, even though it was of very much smaller dimensions (6 ft. 7 in.
- ↑ Great Falls was a pioneer among the cities of the state in the development of a park system. When the city was first settled its site was a “barren tract of sand, thinly covered with buffalo-grass and patches of sage brush.” The first settler, Paris Gibson, of Minneapolis, began the planting of trees, which, though not indigenous, grew well. The city’s sidewalks are bordered by strips of lawn, in which there is a row of trees, and the city maintains a large nursery where trees are grown for this purpose. A general state law (1901) placing the parking of cities on a sound financial basis is due very largely to the impulse furnished by Great Falls. See an article, “Great Falls, the Pioneer Park City of Montana,” by C. H. Forbes-Lindsay, in the Craftsman for November 1908.
