CHAPTER 4
LIVING ON THE LAND
I n its present definition, Davis County is the smallest in area of Utah's twenty-nine counties. With fewer than 300 square miles, it is noticeably smaller t h a n the second and third smallest counties, neighboring Weber and Morgan, with their 600 or so square miles. Within Davis County, the Great Salt Lake on the west and the steep Wasatch Range on the east taken together reduce the habitable area by almost one-third. Furthermore, Antelope Island—dry, and isolated by the briny lake—was useful in the nineteenth century only as a range for cattle. For all practical purposes, Davis County exists as a narrow strip of land east of the lake measuring twenty-three miles from n o r t h to south and varying in width from three miles at the Farmington-Centerville b o u n d a r y to fifteen miles at the county's northern border. 1 Reference to this contiguous land area does not entirely define the county's size. For hundreds of years, the shallow lake's meandering shoreline has reached into some of the adjacent lowlands, leaving alkaline sediments and creating marshy areas unsuitable for agriculture and many other uses. As they have done for ages, however, these 96
