Great Salt Lake Desert is a low, flat, arid region in northwestern Utah, just west of Salt Lake City. It extends south for about 110 miles (177 kilometers) from the Grouse Creek Mountains, and borders on Nevada. The desert covers about 4,000 square miles (10,000 square kilometers). For many years, the desert acted as a barrier to westward travel.
The Bonneville Salt Flats occupy about 70 square miles (180 square kilometers) of extremely level salt beds in the desert near Wendover, close to the Nevada border. The Bonneville Salt Flats International Speedway is located on the Bonneville Salt Flats. These salt beds are usually hard enough to permit automobile racing on them. But rises in the water level of the Great Salt Lake near the desert sometimes makes the surface of the salt beds soft and wet. Automobile-racing drivers have set international speed records on the Bonneville Speedway.
