Great Basin National Park guide · 1 min read
Fremont People and the Upper Pictograph Cave
About 1,800 years ago, the Fremont people learned to farm and began living in villages in this region.
Before that, people hunted the streams and marshes here during the most recent ice age. As the climate warmed, they made new tools and found new ways to gather plants.
The Fremont also made decorative pottery and painted images on rock surfaces. Their rock paintings and pottery are part of what remains of their culture, and they offer a direct link to people who lived here long ago.
Long droughts later destroyed their crops, and the Fremont returned to hunting and gathering for food. Shoshone and Paiute family bands continued that way of life until the mid-1800s, when settlers, ranchers, and miners pushed them away from the food sources they had long depended on. Some Native people still gather pine nuts and other resources from the land today.
You can learn more about these people at the Great Basin Visitor Center, which sits outside the park north of Baker, Nevada, and often gives visitors their first look at the region. Its exhibit hall includes models of structures linked to the people of the area, and a staffed information desk can answer questions. The Lehman Caves Visitor Center also has a blue wall of interpretive panels describing the people of the Great Basin.
