Honoring Native Land 

Archaeological evidence shows Native Americans have lived and thrived in the shadow of the Snake Range since the end of the Pleistocene. Just how often they visited and utilized the resources of the Highland Ridge area over these intervening 14,000 years cannot be definitively known. But what is clear, for anyone who is blessed to live within the view-shed of a magnificent mountain, is the profound emotional and psychological impact of having a towering summits of the South Snake Range as part of you daily activities. Watching the play of light from sunrise to sunset, the rotation of the stars, and the march of seasons up and down the mountain creates a sense of place and connection like no other.

Ethnohistorical and ethnographic evidence shows that the ancestors of the Shoshone/Goshute have traditionally used the South Snake Range for countless generations, and continued to utilize the area for subsistence needs and cultural purposes ever since they they were forcibly removed from the area. The first recorded EuroAmerican expedition to the South Snake Range in 1855 documented Native Americans in the area and even in the vicinity of the highest summit The early maps of the South Snake Range show the area surrounded by “Indian Rancharias” or settlements. In 1938, Julian Stewart documented more that a dozen Shoshone/Goshute village sites in the Spring Valley west and north of the future of the range,and a few in the Snake Valley to the east. The entire area is considered sacred by the Shoshone/Goshute people and is integral to the stories of their ancestors, history, and present life ways.

History

Jedediah Smith was the first Euro American to document the Snake Range when he crossed over what would become know of as Sacramento Pass in 1827. The South Snake Range comes into Euro American focus in the year 1855. In early 1855, Edward Steptoe, following orders to find a possible railroad route from Salt Lake City to Sacramento, headed west, south of the Great Salt Lake, and discovered the easy grades required for a railroad crossing to California abruptly ended at the distant high and rocky walls of what will become known as the Goshute and Snake Ranges. On June 3, 1855, Ezra Granger Williams, on an exploration mission for the Mormons, decided to climb the highest peak in the South Snake Range from Snake Creek on the east side. The evening before the climb, Williams, his men and their Native guide, Nioquitch, were visited by Native Americans. The day they approached the mountain for the climb they encountered additional Native Peoples and invited them to join their camp. About half way to the top, two of their party gave out and returned to camp. The rest of the party continued the climb. Well above the treeline and near the summit they found a Native American woman, who, initially frightened was put to ease by Williams’ native guide. In September of 1855, after growing weary of driving cattle from Utah to California along the established circuitous route of the Humboldt River, Howard Egan pioneered a new, shorter route through Central Nevada which would become know as the Egan Trail. In mid-year of 1858, a Mormon exploration party led by Orson B. Adams, turned northwest along the eastern base of the South Snake Range. This expedition explored and blazed a wagon trail from Utah, over Sacramento Pass, across the Spring Valley, over the Schell Creek Range, and into the Steptoe Valley, as a possible escape contingency for the Mormons of Utah as the US Government Utah Expedition was setting out for Salt Lake City to quash a believed pending Mormon insurrection. During the last half of the 19th century, many of the ranching homesteads and settlements around the South Snake Range were established by Mormons from Salt Lake City.