Pony Express trail · Station VIII of 12 covered
The Old Riverbed
A dry channel cut by a river that stopped flowing when the last ice age ended.
Position Great Salt Lake Desert, Tooele County, Utah · approximate, no coordinate on record
The Old Riverbed is exactly what the name says. During the Pleistocene, Lake Bonneville drained through this channel, and when the lake fell the river stopped and the bed stayed. You drive across it now as a wide shallow trench in an otherwise flat desert.
A station stood at the crossing. There is little to see beyond a marker and the shape of the ground, but the shape of the ground is the whole story here: you are looking at the outflow of an inland sea that was six hundred feet deeper than the valley you are standing in.
This section of road turns to gumbo after rain and becomes genuinely impassable. It is the stretch where people get stuck.
This is remote, unpaved country with no fuel, no water and thin phone coverage for a hundred miles. Carry more water than you think you need, tell somebody your route, and do not attempt the crossing in a low car after rain. The BLM manages most of the road; call the Salt Lake Field Office for current conditions rather than trusting any page, including this one.