Giant mud puddles were once great inland seas

Giant mud puddles were once great inland seas

Westward bound on the old Applegate Trail in the early 1850s, the party of settlers halted in confusion at the shore of a vast, placid lake. Its waters stretched nearly all the way to the horizon, with just a thin rim of dimly glimpsed ridges beyond to indicate that they had not reached some sort of preternaturally calm ocean. The settlers, by now, had passed a few of these alkali lakes as the...