Description: A new theory on the "Bonneville Flood" based on a major earthquake generating a tsunami in Lake Bonneville which overwhelms the natural dam at Red Rock Pass.
graben (20) bell canyon (6) little cottonwood canyon (3) bonneville flood (2) wasatch fault (1)
What follows is the story of a very large multi-segment earthquake on the Wasatch Fault at a time when Lake Bonneville was at its highest level. The earthquake caused massive surging and a tsunami in Lake Bonneville. That surging carried up into Cache Valley and overwhelmed the natural dam formed by the Marsh Creek delta on the other side of Red Rock Pass in Zenda, Idaho. The Bonneville Flood ensued.
I first presented this theory and the associated theories were presented at the 2020 and 2022 Geological Society of America conferences and in YouTube videos posted in 2021. Those theories challenge a whole list of underlying assumptions regarding Lake Bonneville, the climate and the Wasatch Fault.
In trying to write everything up into the form of a technical paper, I continued to encounter aspects of the previous theories regarding the lake that just didn't seem to fit what I could observe in the field. A lot of thought experiments later, and a number of instances of waking in the early morning hours and exclaiming "oh" and thinking "well, that can't be right", we are now here.