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The arid lands around Summer Lake were once lush. During the Pleistocene Era, vast areas of this region of south central Oregon were covered by lakes and wetlands. As the last ice age was ending, rain and runoff from melting snow filled the lowlands throughout this region of the Great Basin, creating an immense, freshwater lake called Lake Chewaucan. The lake covered 461r square miles (1,190t km2) at depths of up to 375t feet (114o m).[1]

Lake Chewaucan covered the Summer Lake basin and drainage system much of the late Pleistocene Era. The last high water period is thought to have occurred about 13,000 years ago. There is no archaeological evidence of human utilization of Lake Chewaucan during this time. The earliest evidence for possible human occupation of the basin comes from the Paisley Caves excavated by Luther Cressman in the late 1930s. Cressman found some inconclusive evidence that humans could have begun occupation the Summer Lake area around 11,000 years ago.[2]

Summer Lake was discovered and named by Captain John C. Frémont during his 1843 mapping expedition through central Oregon. Fremont and his Army Topographical team were mapping the Oregon Territory from The Dalles on Columbia River to Sutter's Fort in Sacramento, California. On 16 December 1843, the expedition struggled down a steep cliff from a snow-covered plateau to reach a large lake in the valley below. Fremont named snow covered rim Winter Ridge and the temperate waters Summer Lake. [6] Fremont described the discovery and naming of Summer Lake as follows:

At our feet...more than a thousand feet below...we looked into a green prairie country, in which a beautiful lake, some twenty miles (32 km) in length, was spread along the foot of the mountain...Shivering on snow three feet deep, and stiffening in a cold north wind, we exclaimed at once that the names of summer lake and winter ridge should be applied to these proximate places of such sudden and violent contrast. (Captain John C. Fremont, 16 December 1843, Report of the Second Fremont Expedition) [7]