Goshute Indian Reservation

Location: 60 miles north of Baker, Nevada on well-maintained gravel road.

Goshute Mountains - Audubon Society Important Bird Area

Bonneville Cutthroat Trout Restoration Project

The Goshute Indian Reservation is located on the Nevada-Utah border in Snake Valley. The Goshutes are a Shoshone people in culture and language.

Before settlers arrived, the Goshutes spent winters in Deep Creek Valley. They lived in dug-out houses covered with poles, willow branches and earth. Clothing consisted of buckskin, blankets were woven from buck-brush bark and rabbit skins. In the spring, they moved closer to the mountains and then returned to the valley again in the fall.

After the settlers came, the Goshutes worked on the ranches and were paid in food rather than money. In the 1850s, mormon missionaries came to Ibapah and began teaching their religion.

Next, soldiers came to Goshute lands. One troop attacked a group of Indians who had gathered for a ceremony in Spring Valley killing the men, women and children in one family.

So the Goshutes retaliated by attacking a nearby fort and burning the barn.

President Taft set aside 34,560 acres for the tribe in 1914 and in 1928, an additional purchase enlarged the reservation to more than 111,000 acres.

Currently, the tribe is working with Trout  Unlimited to help re-establish the native Bonneville Cutthroat Trout populations in mountain streams. The area has also been designated an Audubon Society Important Bird Area.

Source: "Newe: A Western Shoshone History" by the Inter-Tribal Council of Nevada.
Various websites and on-line articles.