The Zagros mountains run parallel to Iran’s coast on the Persian Gulf. These mountains were formed when the Arabian Plate collided with the Eurasian Plate, resulting in a number of ridges and faults for salt domes to form. The structure of the Zagros Mountains is shaped by more than 130 salt domes and it is one of the most significant simple folded systems in the world.
The diapirs (a rising body of salt) break through the surface of the domes to produce flowing glaciers of salt. However, there is not enough rain occuring in this arid region to dissolve the salt and carry it away. Apart from salt domes, there are salt caves, including the longest salt cave in the world at over 6.4 km in the Namakdan Mountain, and also salt glaciers, salt valleys, karst sinkholes, and salt springs.
Here is an excellent aerial view of Grants, New Mexico taken in 1958. You can plainly see Route 66 just above the railroad tracks. The resolution is excellent in this photo. You enlarge it and see the California Hotel to the bottom left along Rt. 66, the Santa Fe Railway station at the bottom left, and numerous cars in the photo.
Grants, NM has experienced many booms, from railway to logging to carrots. But when a local Navajo shepherd named Paddy Martinez discovered uranium ore in nearby Haystack Mesa in 1950, Grants was flooded with uranium prospectors and experienced a mining boom spanning the 1950s to the 1980s.
This photo is courtesy of the Center for Southwest Research, Albuquerque, NM, photographer Lee Marmom, 1958.
Car camping in the 1920s. Or early motorhome living.