Salt Lake Valley
Salt Lake Valley is a 500-square-mile (1,300 km2) valley in Salt Lake County in the north-central portion of the U.S. state of Utah. It contains Salt Lake City and many of its suburbs, notably Murray, Sandy, South Jordan, West Jordan, and West Valley City; its total population is 1,029,655 as of 2010. Brigham Young said "this is the place", when he and his fellow settlers moved into Utah after being driven out of several states.
The Valley is surrounded in every direction except the northwest by steep mountains that at some points rise 7,100 feet (2,200 m) from the valley floor's base elevation. It lies nearly encircled by the Wasatch Mountains on the east, the Oquirrh Mountains on the west, Traverse Ridge to the south and the Great Salt Lake on the northwest, with the peaks of Antelope Island visible.
Every entrance into the valley is extremely narrow and often congested. They include the Point of the Mountain to the south via the Jordan Narrows, a gap in the Traverse Mountains, narrow entrances between the Great Salt Lake and Oquirrh Mountains to the northwest and the Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountains to the north, and several canyons to the east including Parley's Canyon and Emigration Canyon.
Flowing from Utah Lake in Utah Valley in the south, the Jordan River runs north through a gap in the Traverse Mountains, bisecting the Valley before emptying into the Great Salt Lake. The Jordan River, along with numerous mountain streams and reservoirs, provides irrigation water to the rapidly growing Valley.
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