page_title: Emery, Utah
section_title: Fremont people, the Old Spanish Trail, and exploration
hierarchical_section_title: Emery, Utah / History / Fremont people, the Old Spanish Trail, and exploration
caption_attribution_description: English: Detail of the Rochester Rock Art Panel in Emery County, Utah
context_page_description: Emery is a town in Emery County, Utah, United States. The population was 288 at the 2010 census.
context_section_description: The Fremont culture or Fremont people is a pre-Columbian archeological culture who existed in the area from AD 700 to 1300. It was adjacent to, roughly contemporaneous with, but distinctly different from the Ancestral Pueblo peoples. The culture received its name from the Fremont River, where the first Fremont sites were discovered. The Fremont River in Utah flows from the Johnson Valley Reservoir near Fish Lake east through Capitol Reef National Park to Muddy Creek, whose headwaters begin just north of Emery.
  Two significant Fremont culture sites are located north and south of the town. Artifacts such as pottery, manos and metates (millingstones), and weaponry have been found along Muddy and Ivie creeks. Coil pottery, which is most often used to identify archaeological sites as Fremont, is not very different from that made by other Southwestern groups, nor are its vessel forms and designs distinct. What distinguishes Fremont pottery from other ceramic types is the material from which it is constructed. Variations in temper, the granular rock or sand added to wet clay to insure even drying and to prevent cracking, have been used to identify five major Fremont ceramic types. They include Snake Valley gray in the southwestern part of the Fremont region, Sevier gray in the central area, Great Salt Lake gray in the northwestern area, and Uinta and Emery gray in the northeast and southwestern regions. Sevier, Snake Valley, and Emery gray also occur in painted varieties. A unique and beautiful painted bowl form, Ivie Creek black-on-white, is found along either side of the southern Wasatch Plateau. In addition to these five major types found at Fremont villages, a variety of locally made pottery wares are found on the fringes of the Fremont region in areas occupied by people who seem to have been principally hunters and gatherers rather than farmers. The Rochester Rock Art Panel 3 miles (5 km) west of Emery is a significant rock art panel left by the Fremont People and has been the target of vandalism and relic thieves.
  The earliest known entrance into the region known as Castle Valley by Europeans dates back to the Spanish explorers. The oldest names in Emery County are Spanish, not Native American — San Rafael, Sinbad, and probably Castle Valley itself, are landmarks of that era when Spanish padres, Spanish American explorers, fur traders, trappers, and frontiersmen followed the Old Spanish Trail through Emery. From about 1776 to the mid-1850s the Old Spanish Trail came up from Santa Fe, New Mexico, crossed the Colorado River at Moab, then the Green River where the city of Green River now stands, across the San Rafael desert into Castle Valley, then crossed along the eastern part of the town. This became the established route of the Spanish slave traders who captured indigenous people along the route and were selling them as slaves.
  A sizable herd of wild horses are managed east of Emery. These wild horses and burros have occupied the San Rafael Swell area since the beginning of the Old Spanish Trail in the early 19th century. Early travelers would lose animals or have them run off by Indians or rustlers. Many of these animals were headed for California to be traded and sold and were of good stock. The herd was also augmented through the release of domestic horses from local ranches. By the early 20th century, wild horse and burro numbers had soared and were being captured and sold by local mustangers. This continued until the passage of the Wild and Free-Roaming Horses and Burros Act of 1971. Since the passage of this act, the horses and burros have been managed under federal law and Bureau of Land Management regulation.
  In the summer of 1853 Captain John W. Gunnison was sent by the War Department of the United States to explore a railroad route to the Pacific coast. He was assisted by Lt. E. G. Beckwith. They entered Castle Valley and passed near the town in October 1853. Gunnison described the area as follows: "Except three or four small cottonwood trees, there is not a tree to be seen by the unassisted eye on any part of 
caption: The Rochester Panel located northeast of Emery
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