How does the Great Salt Lake stay salty?
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Water flows into the lake and never flows out. The salt comes in and can’t go anywhere else so the salinity increases little by little over many years.
Rain water falls on rocks and dissolves water-soluble minerals, particularly sodium and chlorine (aka “salt’ or “sodium chloride”), out of those rocks.
The water then flows down-hill towards the ocean — or, in the case of the Great Basin region of the North America, towards the Great Salt Lake — carrying the salt with it.
The heat of the sun the evaporates water out of the Great Salt Lake, and the wind carries the water vapor away, but the salt that was carried into the lake doesn’t evaporate, so the salt gets left behind.
After millions of years, more and more salt gets deposited into the lake left and left behind as water evaporates away, leaving the Great Salt Lake very salty.
Salt doesn’t evaporate, only the water. The salt remains, except when we dig it up.
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