with a spurt of vitality. Since it is not large nor of great bulk, it survives when winds blow down larger trees.

As a bristle cone grows, it also dies. The average tree is a weird mixture of living and dead tissues, and the living foliage needs only a slender thread of live bark to keep growing.

The name "bristle cone" comes from the stiff curved bristles that guard the 3 to 31⁄2 inch cones. These cones are slightly curved and a deep chocolate brown when fully mature. The needles of the tree are a deep green and grow in clusters of five.

Besides being a curosity, the bristle cone pine provides us with

Perhaps it is because we

yearn for immortality that we are
Fascinated by things that are old.
Great antiquity was not given to
man, but he was given an inquir-
ng mind and the intellect to un-
ravel the secrets of nature. So it
is no surprise that we not only
ask "What is the oldest living
thing in the world?" but that we
know the answer.

Most people would not be surprised to learn that the oldest living thing is a tree. The giant Sequoias and stately Redwoods are obviously very old. But there is a tree that is even older. It is the Bristle Cone Pine that grows on public lands and other land in the west.

In size, the bristle cone is no match for either the Sequoia or the Redwood; a 60 foot specimen is a champ. But if no match in size, this ancient tree is the equal of any tree in beauty. Yet, its beauty is not conventional. Like a gargoyle resting on the ledge of some old-world temple, it's so

The oldest known bristle cone is found on the Humboldt National Forest. It is 4,900 years old. The oldest Sequoia is a mere 3,800. Four thousand nine hundred years translates into a tree that was a seedling at the time the ancient Britons were building Stonehenge, and had weathered the elements for 3,000 years when Caesar's legions were invading England.

In its fight to stay alive, the bristle cone has adapted to a harsh environment. It can thrive in high altitudes where it has little competition from other trees and where man is apt to be only a casual visitor. It needs a minimum of soil to nourish it.

During dry seasons it becomes dormant, and grows only a small bit, but once the rains come, it is capable of reviving and growing

a link to the past that scientists find valuable in many ways. Since a tree grows faster in years when there is plenty of rainfall, its treering pattern provides a graphic record of the weather cycles that have occurred during the lifetime of the tree. This, in turn, helps meterologists predict future weather patterns, and can also provide valuable clues as to why ancient tribes migrated or behaved in other ways.

The oldest bristle cone pine found on BLM land is 3,000 years old, and lands have been set aside near Ely, Nevada to peserve major stands of these trees.

The ancient age of the Bristle Cones is universally accepted, but we cannot know their future. Does a bristle cone ever die of old age? We don't know. It is within the realm of possibility that these tough old trees will be around to monitor the comings and goings of our descendents for generations to come.

The Bonneville Salt Flats is

one of the public domain's most dramatic features. The east-bound traveler who crosses over Observation Point, soon reaches a point in the road where suddenly the Flats glare with startling whiteness. and stretch away to the horizon. If it is the traveler's first visit, the effect of the view can hardly be overstated. Today the Flats may be the highlight of a journey over Interstate 80 between the Nevada line and Salt Lake City, or vice versa, but not so many years ago it was a place the traveler avoided a place where nothing lived and a bit of carelessness could cost the traveler the loss of his livestock and even his own life as he tried to reach more hospitable country beyond. Little could those early pioneers imagine that within less than one hundred years men would travel across the Salt Flats at speeds in excess of 600 miles an hour.

Most of the Salt Flats (30,200

acres) north of Interstate 80 are on public land, and are a part of the heritage of all Americans. Altogether, the area measures 44,000 acres. Besides the lands administered by the Bueau of Land Management, the Flats are owned by the State of Utah and by the Kaiser Aluminum and Chemical Corporation.

Like the Great Salt Lake, the Flats are what is left of prehistoric Lake Bonneville. Lake Bonneville is the name given to an inland sea that once covered about one third of what is now the State of Utah. Because of climatic and geographic changes, the lake slowly dried up leaving as a remnant the present Great Salt Lake and the residue of salt that makes up the Flats.

Lake Bonneville, and the salt flat it left behind, were named for Captain B. L. E. Bonneville, an early military explorer and fur trader who traveled extensively through the west during the first

half of the 19th century. Ironically, he never saw either the Great Lake or the Flats that bear his name.

One geologist has described the Flats as similar to a flat piece of ice floating in a sea of soft mud. The analogy becomes painfully clear to visitors when they drive off the raft of salt and become mired in the soft mud that is found around the fringes of the salt.

"Salt" is a term used for a family of chemical compounds. Besides the familiar sodium chloride used on the table, salt can also refer to compounds of potassium, magnesium and lithium as well as

GEOFFERY MIDDAUGH

Mr. Middaugh wrote this story while working as a Outdoor Recreation Planner in BLM's Salt Lake District Office. He has since transferred to the Bureau's ElCentro, California Area Office.

other metallic elements. All four of the compounds named above are found on the flats and each contributes in some way to make the surface of the Flats smooth and hard.

The surface is so flat that water does not readily drain. During winter and early spring rain may accumulate to a depth of a few inches so that water stands over the entire area until the higher temperatures of approaching summer causes it to evaporate.

The wind blowing this layer of standing water smooths the salt until it is almost perfectly flat. It is, in fact, so flat that this is the only place in the United States where one can see the curvature of the earth as he looks toward the horizon.

Historically the Flats have been a barrier to westward travel. In 1826 Jedediah Smith led the first party of white men across the area. The stories he and his men told about their hardships were so well heeded by travelers that there was not another attempt at crossing until 1845.

In that year John Charles Fremont and his party made a rigerous two-day march across the Flats. They barely made it and their stories of suffering added to the areas bad reputation.

Then came Lansford Hastings, a brash adventurer who had ambitions to become a leader among the west-bound emigrants. In 1842 he had been elected captain of a wagon train bound for California and found the honor exhilarating. With soaring ambitions, he made a return trip from California to Missouri, and in 1845 published a book, the "Emigrant Guide to Oregon and California." In that book, presumably based on his experience, he advocated a shorter route to California. According to Hastings, rather than make the northward loop from Jim Bridger's Trading Post through Fort Hall and then south along the Raft River to the Humbolt River, travelers should, instead, head due west from Bridger's Post.

On the map, this suggestion made good sense. The Fort Hall loop had always irritated California-bound travelers since it took them better than a hundred miles further than the more direct route to the Humbolt as recommended by Hastings.

But Hastings was an irresponsible trail blazer. Although he had traveled the route he later recommended, he had made the trip on horseback a far cry from traveling the same trail in a wagon. Not only would the cumbersome, slower-moving wagons have to cross the Salt Flats in mid August, but would also lose precious time in finding a way through the rugged Wasatch Mountains east of the Great Salt Lake.

The more experienced mountain men who guided the wagon trains understood the dangers of the shorter route and for a time Hastings advice was ignored, but in 1846, despite the warnings of experienced men like James Clyman, the Donnor-Reed party

The fastest cars in the world line up for their turn racing the clock. In each case the next car to run is towed to the starting line by another vehicle.

elected to take the short cut on the strength of Hastings' book.

After losing time trying to find a way through the mountains, the party took 4 days to cross the salt flats losing both animals and wagons along the way.

They reached the opposite side without loss of life, but they had lost so much time and so many irreplacable animals that they reached the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains too late to make a crossing before snow blocked the high mountain passes. Their situation was more serious than they realized. They camped at the foot of the mountains to wait for Spring. Then during a terrible winter almost half of the party starved to death. Thus the Salt Flats had a direct bearing on what has become the best known tragedy of the California Trail.

The experience of the Donnor Party so firmly established the bad reputation of the Salt Flats that east-west travelers avoided it