Fremont Indian State Park and Museum is a
state park
State parks are parks or other protected areas managed at the sub-national level within those nations which use "state" as a political subdivision. State parks are typically established by a state to preserve a location on account of its natural ...
of
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
, US, which interprets archaeological remains of the
Fremont culture
The Fremont culture or Fremont people is a pre-Columbian archaeological culture which received its name from the Fremont River in the U.S. state of Utah, where the culture's sites were discovered by local indigenous peoples like the Navajo and Ute ...
. The park is located in
Sevier County, Utah in the
Clear Creek Canyon
Clear Creek is a tributary of the South Platte River, approximately long,U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline dataThe National Map, accessed March 25, 2011 in north central Colorado in the United States. Th ...
.
The park directly adjoins
Interstate 70
Interstate 70 (I-70) is a major east–west Interstate Highway System, Interstate Highway in the United States that runs from Interstate 15, I-15 near Cove Fort, Utah, to a park and ride lot just east of Interstate 695 (Maryland), I-695 in ...
as it travels up the Clear Creek Canyon, and thus is highly accessible by auto. The nearest town with full services (
motels
A motel, also known as a motor hotel, motor inn or motor lodge, is a hotel designed for motorists, usually having each room entered directly from the parking area for motor vehicles rather than through a central lobby. Entering dictionaries ...
, etc.) is
Richfield. There are campgrounds and
RV parks in the area as well.
The site was discovered during construction of Interstate 70, and thousands of artifacts have been excavated from the ancient village and put on permanent display at the museum there.
The museum offers hiking trails and picnic areas.
The Fremont Indians were agriculturalists who lived from about 400 to 1300 in north and central Utah and adjacent parts of Colorado, Idaho and Nevada. The Fremont are thought to have come from
hunter-gatherer
A traditional hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living an ancestrally derived lifestyle in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local sources, especially edible wild plants but also insects, fungi, ...
s who previously lived in this location and were influenced by the
Ancestral Puebloans
The Ancestral Puebloans, also known as the Anasazi, were an ancient Native American culture that spanned the present-day Four Corners region of the United States, comprising southeastern Utah, northeastern Arizona, northwestern New Mexico, a ...
who introduced corn and pottery, making year-round settlements possible.
Climate
Fremont Indian State Park has a borderline
semi-arid
A semi-arid climate, semi-desert climate, or steppe climate is a dry climate sub-type. It is located on regions that receive precipitation below potential evapotranspiration, but not as low as a desert climate. There are different kinds of semi-ar ...
and
humid continental climate
A humid continental climate is a climatic region defined by Russo-German climatologist Wladimir Köppen in 1900, typified by four distinct seasons and large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot (and often humid) summers and freezing ...
(
Köppen Köppen is a German surname. Notable people with the surname include:
* Bernd Köppen (born 1951), German pianist and composer
* Carl Köppen (1833-1907), German military advisor in Meiji era Japan
* Edlef Köppen (1893–1939), German author and ...
''BSk''/''Dfb''), characterized by cold winters, warm-to-hot summers, and high
diurnal temperature variation
In meteorology, diurnal temperature variation is the variation between a high air temperature and a low temperature that occurs during the same day.
Temperature lag
Temperature lag is an important factor in diurnal temperature variation: peak d ...
throughout the year.
References
External links
Fremont Indian State Park and Museum
{{authority control
Archaeological museums in Utah
Fishlake National Forest
Museums in Sevier County, Utah
Native American museums in Utah
Protected areas established in 1987
Protected areas of Sevier County, Utah
State parks of Utah
1987 establishments in Utah