although geology is not my strongst field of study, and I have not pursued a degree in it, it has been a lifelong interest. Well, at least since I was maybe two. . . . playing in the mud. Like weather, another favorite subject, it absorbs spare time whenever I have it.
Like the huge mysteries, such as the very deep margin between the Great Basin province and the Colorado Plateau, there are open questions about the Great Salt Lake depression which go far far into the past. During the Sevier Orogeny period. . .. comparatively recent in geologic terms, there was already a lake there, even though great rivers flowed eastward depositing incredible sediments in the basin which was where the Colorado Plateau now is. There were already the Uintah and Uncompaghre uplifts as well.
The features which raise the question about a possible vast meteoric crater where the lake now is involves mountain structures within the lake and particularly on its western edge. . . . where I have hiked extensively, noting faulting features which defy the usual basin/range block faulting seen elsewhere in the Great Basin. These features are disturbances in the very deep Cambrian through Pennsylvanian carbonate stratas, incompatible with the known thrust faulting of an earlier era. There is a notable anticline or dome structure to it, in broad terms thought to be an uplift resulting from local fracturing impact with resultant weakness in the crust. So, if you want to read about it, check out the comment in Geology of Utah by Stokes.
As you are probably aware, the incredible thicknesses of carbonates from the 500M to 200M yrs BP required shallow seas for their formation across that period, and the Great Salt Lake area is where those thicknesses are the greatest, suggesting it has long, long been for some reason a depression of some kind. So the question may still be open. . . .
