The People and Land
The People and Land
Indigenous Culture and Use
The Red Desert is an Indigenous ancestral landscape. The Shoshone, Ute, Bannock, Arapaho, Cheyenne, Lakota, and Crow have lived, hunted, and prospered in these vast lands for generations. In 1863 the Fort Bridger Treaty established the 44-million-acre Shoshone Reservation, encompassing the Red Desert. Five years later the Reservation was reduced to 3.1 million acres. The Eastern Shoshone, along with the Northern Arapaho, now reside on the Wind River Indian Reservation, bordering the Red Desert to the north.
The Desert is an Indigenous living cultural corridor. For over 10,000 years, Indigenous peoples have been hunting, gathering, and traveling the Red Desert. A network of trails, buffalo jumps, teepee rings, and numerous petroglyphs endure as spiritual places for traditional and contemporary uses by Native people. The area also provides year-round plant gathering of food and medicine for Indigenous peoples.
Scott Copeland
Western History
The Red Desert is the geographic heart of the American story of manifest destiny. It marks the confluence of three western territories – where Mexico, Britain, and the new United States clashed for dominance of the North American continent. South Pass, the easiest route across the Rocky Mountains and Continental Divide, was used by generations of Tribal Nations and then by early explorers, mountain men, and western bound emigrants. It was the geographic key that unlocked the nation’s expansion and allowed the U.S. to grow into a dual-coastal nation of global power.
The Red Desert contains some of the least disturbed segments of our National Historic Trails, including the Oregon, California, Mormon Pioneer, and Pony Express Trails.
The Red Desert is a showcase of frontier history. It was a major thoroughfare for wagon trains, gold seekers, Mormon emigrants, stagecoaches, freighters, outlaws, army garrisons, and Pony Express riders, and was the route for the transcontinental telegraph line. This past is evidenced by the nearby restored gold mining ghost towns of South Pass City and Miners Delight, and the community of Atlantic City. Many stage and freight roads, abandoned ranches, and way stations can be found along these historic routes.
Bob Wick/BLM/Flickr
Bob Wick/BLM/Flickr
A Working Landscape, and for Recreation
The Red Desert is a working landscape, with generational family ranches, outfitting, prospecting, and oil and gas development – which are part of the heritage of Wyoming. Responsible stewardship and targeted restoration can ensure these activities continue to be balanced for protecting the Red Desert’s wild nature, and cultural and natural resources.
The Red Desert is an accessible landscape. A network of dirt roads provide people with access for a variety of multiple uses, including ranching, recreation, cultural use, education, and opportunities for spiritual experience, solitude, and reflection.
The Red Desert provides for world-class big game hunting, and unique opportunities for remote and backcountry outdoor recreation. For generations, this landscape has supported traditional recreational use such as hunting, horseback riding, camping, wildlife viewing, hiking, and rock hounding, and supports newer uses such as cycling, ORVs, backpacking, and RV touring.
These lands hold promise for local economic diversification through responsible well-managed recreational and tourism use. The landscape draws visitors from across the country, improving the quality of life for the gateway communities of Rock Springs, South Pass and Atlantic City, Pinedale, Farson, Lander, and Jeffery City.
Andy Austin/WY Office of Tourism
Dispersed camping in the Red Desert