" Northwest Travel: Oregon Outback; Natural and historic attractions abound ...
18.05.12
SUMMER LAKE — The landscape of northern Lake County is rugged and dry today. Here on the Great Basin, sagebrush is ubiquitous and water, especially drinkable water, is scarce. Remnants of volcanoes and alkali deserts are the dominant landforms. Population is sparse; livestock ranchers and alfalfa farmers struggle to survive.
Yet thousands of years ago, geologists tell us, this region was covered by the immense freshwater lakes from which the county draws its name.
I opened a fascinating door on this huge and seemingly barren county last month when I drove the Oregon Outback National Scenic Byway from La Pine to Paisley.
I learned that in times long past — at the end of the Ice Ages, about 13,000 years ago — ancestors of modern Paiute, Klamath and Modoc tribes lived along the shores of giant Lake Fort Rock and Lake Chewaucan. Pleistocene mammals — mammoths and mastodons, bison, camels, horses and giant beavers — still grazed the marshy lands, holdovers from a time when the climate was lusher.
Source: Bend Bulletin