Sevier Lake is an intermittent and endorheic

Endorheic

An endorheic basin is a closed drainage basin that retains water and allows no outflow to other bodies of water such as rivers or oceans...

 lake which lies in the lowest part of the Sevier Desert, Millard County, Utah

Millard County, Utah

Millard County is a county located in the U.S. state of Utah. In 2010, its population was 12,420. It was named for Millard Fillmore, thirteenth President of the United States. Its county seat is Fillmore and the largest city is Delta.-Geography:...

. Like Great Salt Lake

Great Salt Lake

The Great Salt Lake, located in the northern part of the U.S. state of Utah, is the largest salt water lake in the western hemisphere, the fourth-largest terminal lake in the world. In an average year the lake covers an area of around , but the lake's size fluctuates substantially due to its...

 and Utah Lake

Utah Lake

Utah Lake is a freshwater lake in the U.S. state of Utah. On the western side of Utah Valley, the lake is overlooked by Mount Timpanogos and Mount Nebo. The lake's only river outlet, the Jordan River, is a tributary of the Great Salt Lake and is highly regulated with pumps. Evaporation accounts...

, it is a remnant of Pleistocene

Pleistocene

The Pleistocene is the epoch from 2,588,000 to 11,700 years BP that spans the world's recent period of repeated glaciations. The name pleistocene is derived from the Greek and ....

 Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville

Lake Bonneville was a prehistoric pluvial lake that covered much of North America's Great Basin region. Most of the territory it covered was in present-day Utah, though parts of the lake extended into present-day Idaho and Nevada. Formed about 32,000 years ago, it existed until about 14,500 years...

. Sevier Lake is fed primarily by the Beaver and Sevier

Sevier River

The Sevier River , extending , is the longest Utah river entirely in the state and drains an extended chain of mountain farming valleys to the intermittent Sevier Lake...

 rivers, and the additional inflow is from the lakes watershed that is part of the Escalante-Sevier hydrologic subregion. The lake has been mostly dry throughout recorded history and is a source of wind-blown dust in dust storm

Dust storm

A dust / sand storm is a meteorological phenomenon common in arid and semi-arid regions. Dust storms arise when a gust front or other strong wind blows loose sand and dirt from a dry surface. Particles are transported by saltation and suspension, causing soil to move from one place and deposition...

s that frequently sweep the Wasatch Front

Wasatch Front

The Wasatch Front is a metropolitan region in the north-central part of the U.S. state of Utah. It consists of a chain of cities and towns stretched along the Wasatch Range from approximately Santaquin in the south to Brigham City in the north...

.

History

The first recorded observation was in 1872, which stated that the lake's surface area was 188 square miles (486.9 km²), salinity was measured at 86 parts per thousand, two and a half times that of the ocean, and maximum depth was 15 feet (4.6 m). In January 1880 the lake was nearly dry, and had been so for the past one or two years. The Sevier River which once flowed to the lake is now largely diverted for irrigation. In 1987 however, the lake was again similar to the recorded description of 1872.

The Dominguez-Escalante Expedition

Dominguez-Escalante Expedition

The Dominguez-Escalante Expedition was conducted in 1776 to find an overland route from Santa Fe, New Mexico to Spanish missions in California...

 named it "Laguna de Miera" after a cartographer on their 1776 expedition. In 1825, trappers working for William Henry Ashley

William Henry Ashley

William Henry Ashley was a pioneering fur trader, entrepreneur, and politician. Though a native of Virginia, Ashley had already moved to St. Genevieve in what was then called Louisiana, when it was purchased by the United States from France in 1803...

 trapped the region, and Jedediah Smith

Jedediah Smith

Jedediah Strong Smith was a hunter, trapper, fur trader, trailblazer, author, cartographer, cattleman, and explorer of the Rocky Mountains, the American West Coast and the Southwest during the 19th century...

 named it after him, the Ashley Lake. On some maps, it was named after Joseph Nicollet

Joseph Nicollet

Joseph Nicolas Nicollet , also known as Jean-Nicolas Nicollet, was a French geographer and mathematician known for mapping the Upper Mississippi River basin during the 1830s....

 in the mid-19th century. The lake is currently named for the river, which is derived from "Rio Severo" (wild river), a local name given by early Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

explorers.