Alkaline lake
Great Salt Lake
Natural Earth’s outline of Great Salt Lake measures about 4,120 km² (1,590 mi²), the 38th largest of the 104 lakes on sizeversus, and 1.05× the size of Cape Verde.
50 km
- Great Salt Lake
- Cape Verde
The numbers
- 4,120km²Area, measured1,590 mi² · Natural Earth outline
- 4,400km²Area, publishedWikidata · 6.5% above our measure, flagged
- 10.7mGreatest depthaverage about 4.6 m
- 18.9km³VolumeWikidata
- 1,283mAbove sea levelSurface, Wikidata
The area is measured from the outline drawn above, on the WGS84 ellipsoid; the published figure is shown beside it, and a water body is kept only if the two are within 10%. This one is between 5% and 10% apart, so it is flagged and no comparison is built for it automatically.
What the numbers say about Great Salt Lake
- The Caspian Sea (called a sea or a lake, depending on the definition), the largest of the 104 lakes ranked on sizeversus, is 92.2× the size of Great Salt Lake; Great Salt Lake ranks 38th.
- Great Salt Lake sits between Lake Gairdner (4,240 km²) and Lake Khanka (4,050 km²) in the ranking.
- Counted as a country, Great Salt Lake would be larger than 41 of the 212 countries listed on sizeversus and would rank 172nd by area, between Trinidad and Tobago (5,120 km²) and Cape Verde (3,930 km²).
- It is larger than 2 of the 51 US states and districts (the biggest of them is Rhode Island, 2,830 km²) and smaller than 49.
- It is smaller than every one of the 31 provinces and regions of China.
- The closest US state is Delaware (5,170 km²): Great Salt Lake is 80% of the size of Delaware.
- Wikidata records a greatest depth of 11 m; with its volume that gives an average depth of about 4.6 m.
- Wikidata records a volume of 19 km³. Poured over Cape Verde (3,930 km²), that water would stand 4.8 m deep.
- Its surface lies about 1,283 m above sea level (Wikidata).
- On a standard web map (Web Mercator), a place at 41°N is drawn about 1.8× too large in area, so Great Salt Lake looks bigger there than it is.
- Laid out flat, Great Salt Lake stretches about 110 km north to south and 91 km east to west.
- Our measured 4,120 km² is 6.5% below Wikidata’s published figure of 4,400 km². This difference is flagged for review: a lake’s outline may include islands or bays that the published figure leaves out, or the water level may differ. The outline is kept because it is within 10%, and this page is not matched automatically to any other.
About the same size as
Countries
Chinese provinces
On the shore
Natural Earth’s outlines of the United States contain or lie within 4 km of the outline of Great Salt Lake. That is what its geometry says, and it is not a statement about who owns the water or where any border runs in it.
Names
- Great Salt Lakethe name in this page’s titlesource: Wikidata’s English label
- Great Saltalso calledsource: Natural Earth
Where Great Salt Lake ranks
Great Salt Lake is the 38th largest of the 104 lakes on sizeversus, ranked by measured area.
Share this outline
Sources and method
- Outline
- Natural Earth, 1:10m Lakes + Reservoirs, public domain (Lakes + Reservoirs). Outlines of lakes are drawn at 1:10 million.
- Boundary
- A lake or a sea has no legal boundary of its own. The outline is a cartographic one, and the page says so by showing the measured area beside the published one.
- Area basis
- Measured outline: computed on the WGS84 ellipsoid from the full-detail outline and shown rounded. Published figure: Wikidata (CC0), fetched 2026-11-11. An outline is kept within 10% of the published figure and matched to other places automatically within 5%.
- Depth, volume, height
- As recorded in Wikidata; a volume that cannot be right for the area and depth is left out.
- Shore
- Countries whose Natural Earth outline contains or comes close to the water's outline; computed, not a statement of ownership.
- Drawing
- Each outline is projected with an equal-area projection centred on its own centroid, so areas stay true and two can be laid over each other.
- Data built
- 2026-11-11