The Fremont people lived throughout Utah and adjacent areas of Idaho, Colorado, and Nevada from 700 to 1300 AD. The culture was named after the Fremont River and its valley, where many of the first Fremont sites were discovered.

The Fremont were a Puebloid group with strong cultural affiliations with their better-known contemporaries, the Ancient Puebloans. While the Ancient Puebloans built cliff dwellings, the Fremont often lived in pit houses (dug into the ground and covered with a brush roof), wickiups (brush-and-log huts), and natural rock shelters. Their social structure consisted of small, loosely organized bands of several families.

They were closely tied to nature and were flexible, diverse, and adaptive—often changing their lifestyles as social or environmental conditions changed.

The Fremont people maintained a hunting-and-gathering lifestyle and supplemented their diet by farming and growing corn, beans, and squash along the river bottoms. Edible native plants included piñon nuts, rice grass, and a variety of berries, nuts, bulbs, and tubers. They ground corn into meal on a stone surface (metate) using a hand-held grinding stone (mano). They stored food in pottery jars or baskets inside small masonry structures called granaries, tucked under small overhangs on narrow ledges. Deer, bighorn sheep, rabbits, birds, fish, and rodents were hunted using snares, nets, fishhooks, bow and arrow, and the atlatl or throwing stick.

Archaeologists have identified several artifacts distinctive to the Fremont people. One was a singular style of basketry, called one-rod-and-bundle, which incorporated willow, yucca, milkweed, and other native fibers. They also created pottery, mostly grayware, with smooth, polished surfaces or corrugated designs pinched into the clay.

Unlike the Ancient Puebloans, who wore yucca fiber sandals, the Fremont made moccasins from the hide of large animals, such as deer, with the dew claw placed on the sole to act as a hobnail and provide extra traction on slippery surfaces.

The most unique and mysterious Fremont artifacts were clay figurines. The small figures resemble people and often show intricate details such as earbobs, necklaces, clothing, hair, facial decorations, and sexual characteristics. The purpose of the figurines is unknown, but they are believed to have had magical or religious significance.

Figurines resemble Fremont rock art. Pictographs (painted) and petroglyphs (carved or pecked) depict people, animals, and other shapes and forms left on rock surfaces. Anthropomorphic (human-like) figures usually have trapezoidal-shaped bodies with arms, legs, and fingers.

The figures are often elaborately decorated with headdresses, earbobs, necklaces, clothing items, and facial expressions. A wide variety of zoomorphic (animal-like) figures include bighorn sheep, deer, dogs, birds, snakes, and lizards. Abstract designs, geometric shapes, and handprints are also common.

The meaning of rock art is unknown. The designs may have recorded religious or mythological events, migrations, hunting trips, resource locations, travel routes, celestial information, and other important knowledge. Many believe rock art uses symbolic concepts that provide the observer with information and that it was important, not simply artistic expression or doodling. Someday, we may understand rock art better, but only if these sites are not destroyed. The slightest touch removes fine granules of sand and leaves behind a residue of sweat and oil. Please refrain from any activity that involves touching the panels.

Fremont rock art and archaeology sites still exist in numerous places in the southwest, including Utah’s Fremont Indian State Park, which protects the largest Fremont site ever excavated in Utah, with 40 pithouses, 20 granaries, and countless artifacts and rock art panels. You can also see more at Zion, Capitol Reef, and Arches National Parks, and at Dinosaur National Monument in Colorado.

By 1300 AD, the Fremont had abandoned their villages. Archaeologists can’t quite agree on what happened, but several changes are generally blamed. First, climatic conditions favorable for farming seem to have changed during this period, forcing local groups to rely more and more on wild food resources and adopt the increased mobility required to collect wild food.