History
The first written record of the lake was made by John Work, the leader of a Hudson’s Bay Company fur trapping expedition. Work recorded his party’s visit in his journal on 16 October 1832. In his journal, Work called it Salt Lake. Work’s journal also implies that other trappers may have been to the lake before his expedition.
Lake Abert was named by Lieutenant John C. Fremont during his 1843 mapping expedition through central and southern Oregon. Fremont and his Army topographical team were mapping the Oregon Territory from The Dalles on Columbia River to Sutter's Fort in the Sacramento Valley of California. Fremont named the lake in honor of Colonel John James Abert, who was chief of the Army's Corps of Topographical Engineers. On 20 December 1843, Fremont described the discovery and naming of Lake Abert as follows:
| “ | ...we turned a point of the hill on our left, and came suddenly in sight of another and much larger lake, which, along its eastern shore, was closely bordered by the high black ridge which walled it in by a precipitous face ... Spread out over a length of 20 miles, the lake, when we first came in view, presented a handsome sheet of water; and I gave to it the name Lake Abert, in honor of the chief of the corps to which I belong. ... | ” |
In 1986, there was a large wildfire that burned 9,854 acres (39.88 km2) along the west side of the lake. After the fire, 800 acres (3.2 km2) along the shoreline were seeded with crested wheatgrass. The remaining acres were left to natural restoration.
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“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
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“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
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