That said, Salt Lake City's decision to deny North Salt Lake a boundary adjustment so North Salt Lake can develop 80 acres of the last vestige of ancient Lake Bonneville's shoreline high above Beck Street is unreasonable and not likely to actually keep the area pristine.

Salt Lake City Council members are right to be concerned about the value of this property as open space. It is part of the tiny and rapidly diminishing portion of the Wasatch Front foothills that remains undeveloped. Most who hike its trails, and many of us who don't, would like very much to see it preserved.

But Salt Lake City should put up or shut up. North Salt Lake owns the land, although it lies within Salt Lake City, and the 23-acre cemetery that the northern neighbor is proposing fits Salt Lake City's zoning requirements for the property. North Salt Lake proposes to leave 47 additional acreas as natural open space and allow development of 10 acres as housing.

If Salt Lake City wants to preserve all the land as open space, it should offer North Salt Lake a fair price and buy it outright. Its value is only going up. North Salt Lake suggested a sales figure of $3.7 million last March, and now developers are offering in the range of $6 million to $8 million.

The Salt Lake City Council's hope that North Salt Lake will accept $100 to delay any court action or sale to developers for 18 months while Salt Lake City tries to convince the national Trust for Public Lands or some other conservation group to purchase the property is far-fetched. The more likely scenario is that North Salt Lake will sue, and it has a good chance to win what would be a costly court fight.

The property's value as a "geo-antiquity" - the remains of the Ice Age shoreline that geologists cherish as a rare feature - cannot be measured in dollars. Unfortunately, that's exactly how its value to developers is calculated, and that is the economic reality Salt Lake City must address.

This area, lying mostly untouched high above the excavated gravel pit along Beck Street, offers hikers and cyclists a stunning view of Salt Lake Valley. Any lively imagination can conjure what a huge expanse Lake Bonneville covered between 32,000 and 14,000 years ago.

But if Salt Lake City wants to keep this ancient beach from going the way of the Pleistocene mammoths that once inhabited Lake Bonneville's shores, it will have to show North Salt Lake the money.