Human Use
The extremely flat, smooth and hard surfaces of dry lakes make them ideal for motor vehicles and bicycles. Furthermore, large-sized dry lakes are excellent spots for pursuing land speed records, as the smoothness of the surface allows low-clearance vehicles to travel very fast without any risk of disruption by surface irregularities, and the path traveled has no obstacles to avoid. The dry lakes at Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and Black Rock Desert in Nevada have both been used for setting land speed records. Dry lake beds that very rarely fill with water are sometimes used as locations for air bases, for similar reasons. Examples include Area 51 in Nevada, and Edwards Air Force Base (originally known as Muroc Dry Lake) in California.
Brines from the subsurface of dry lakes are often exploited for valuable minerals in solution. See, for example Searles Dry Lake and Lithium resources.
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—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
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