Photo taken by NASA of Salt Lake City, Utah. North is to the left of the photo.

Salt Lake City is located in a large valley, the Salt Lake Valley, separated by the Wasatch Mountains to the east and the Oquirrh Mountains to the west. Salt Lake City is located at 40°45'17" North, 111°53'33" West (40.754700, -111.892622)¹. Public domain photo of Salt Lake City, Utah taken by NASA File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... Public domain photo of Salt Lake City, Utah taken by NASA File history Legend: (cur) = this is the current file, (del) = delete this old version, (rev) = revert to this old version. ... This article needs cleanup. ... This article is about the physical-geographic term. ... Salt Lake Valley is a valley in north-central Utah located in Salt Lake County. ... The Wasatch Range (also seen as Wasatch Mountains and Wahsatch Range) is a mountain range that stretches from southern Idaho and Wyoming south through central Utah in the Western United States. ... Categories: US geography stubs | Mountain ranges of North America | Utah geography ... Shortcut: {{GR|#}} {{Cite:GR|#}} The following is a list of sources used in the creation of Wikipedia articles on various geographic topics and locations, such as cities, counties, states, and countries. ...

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 285.9 km² (110.4 mi²). 282.5 km² (109.1 mi²) of it is land and 3.3 km² (1.3 mi²) of it is water. The total area is 1.17% water. The United States Census Bureau (officially Bureau of the Census) is a part of the United States Department of Commerce. ... Square kilometre (US spelling: Square kilometer), symbol km², is an SI unit of surface area. ... This article is about the unit of measure. ...

Like most of the cities stretching north and south of Salt Lake City (see Ogden and Provo), it lies at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, which in some places rise impressively 6,000 feet (1,850 m) above the valley floor. This metro area is known commonly as the Wasatch Front. Most of the valley floor is built up, except for some rapidly disappearing fields and farms on the south and west sides of the valley. Some parts of the benches have seen residential construction, and often the higher up the bench one goes, the more ostentatious the dwellings become. Ogden is a city located in Weber County, Utah. ... Provo is a Utah city about 50 miles south of Salt Lake City. ... metre or meter, see meter (disambiguation) The metre is the basic unit of length in the International System of Units. ... The Wasatch Front is the long, narrow metropolitan region of Utah, USA that extends roughly from Brigham City on the north to Santaquin on the south. ...

The valley floor is the lake bed of the ancient Lake Bonneville, of which the Great Salt Lake is a remnant. Soils in the valley are largely clay and sand, which exposes the city's edifices to considerable risk of damage due to liquefaction caused by an earthquake. The Wasatch Fault runs along the eastern benches of the city, and geologists consider it due for a major earthquake. Butte in Great Salt Lake Desert Lake Bonneville was a prehistoric pluvial lake that covered much of North Americas Great Basin region. ... For the town in the United States, see Clay, New York. ... Patterns in the sand Sand is an example of a class of materials called granular matter. ... Liquefaction is the process by which saturated, unconsolidated soil or sand is converted into a suspension. ... Global earthquake epicenters, 1963–1998 An earthquake is a trembling or a shaking movement of the Earths surface. ...

The marshlands and mudflats to the south and east of the Great Salt Lake border the city's northwest side. Freshwater estuaries enter the lake here, and the lower salinity combines with the marshy terrain to result in considerable algae growth. Under certain weather conditions, which occur up to roughly a dozen times a year, some of the algae dies off and decays, and the northwest winds carry the scent of decaying algae into the city. The smell is known as "lake stink". Because of the flatness of the valley (which impedes views of the lake) and the worthlessness of the lake as a fishery or recreational water (due to its high salinity), the lake stink is one of the few reminders Salt Lakers have that they live near a major body of water.