"When there's no water," Bagley said, "your animals' lives are threatened. Across the brutal salt flats area, people, mules and ox teams had to survive a 90-mile stretch without a source of drinkable water. "And there aren't many places left like that."īagley said a wagon train could travel about only 15 miles a day. "It's exactly what someone would have seen in 1846," said historian Will Bagley. The horizon often seems lost in the shimmery distance. What looks like water is usually a mirage. The controversy surrounds a harsh, surreal landscape a few miles northwest of the Bonneville Salt Flats. The BLM has rejected that plan as well, so the appeal will continue.
Just three weeks ago, the company submitted a new proposal aimed at settling the appeal. The company is pursuing an appeal of that decision with the Interior Board of Land Appeals. The BLM denied a prospecting permit to Mesa Exploration last year. Part of the stark-white playa was crossed by the Donners before they met their horrible fate in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California. Mesa Exploration hopes to eventually create a potash mine in a dried lakebed known as the Pilot Valley playa. History buffs hotly oppose the project because it's near a historic trail - the one used by the ill-fated Donner Party in 1846. WENDOVER - The Bureau of Land Management has rejected an effort by a mining company to resurrect a controversial project in a pristine chunk of unforgiving desert 20 miles north of Wendover. Reading or replaying the story in itsĪrchived form does not constitute a republication of the story. Only for your personal, non-commercial use.
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