CHAPTER 3
PREHISTORIC PEOPLE, EXPLORERS AND TRAPPERS Native American
Occupation
N o r t h e r n Utah's prehistoric people built few m o n u m e n t s to themselves. There are no great cities, no imposing stone pyramids, no huge caches of artifacts for archaeologists to examine. Nevertheless, the area's earliest human inhabitants left enough clues for scientists at least to begin gathering pieces of the puzzle. Unfortunately, few of those clues have been found in Summit County. To date, the only indications we have that early native tribes occupied this area are references in the journals of early white explorers and settlers as well as fragments of stone tools found scattered on the surface in a few locations. No one really knows how long ago native tribes first entered the Summit County area and whether they ever used it as anything more than a seasonal hunting ground. Despite sparse physical evidence, archaeologists believe that humans have inhabited northern Utah for perhaps 12,000 years. At Danger Cave, an important archaeological site in western Utah near the Nevada state line, archaeologists have found artifacts dating from between 11,000 and 12,000 years ago. Since large mammals such as 15
