The nearest inhabited place is the small unincorporated community of Fort Rock, Oregon, which is 6 miles (9.7 km) southeast of the Fremont townsite.

Today, the site is located on an unimproved dirt road 5 miles (8.0 km) west of Fort Rock state park.

To the east, Fort Rock rises well above the surrounding high desert plain with a topographic prominence of approximately 325 feet (99 m).

In 1938, University of Oregon professor Luther S. Cressman excavated the cave and found sandals, tools, and other human artifacts.

[6][7][8] While a federal government report published in 1906 stated that the Fort Rock Valley received 10 to 20 inches (25 to 51 cm) of rain per year, that was not a realistic estimate of the area's normal precipitation.

[1][2][11][12] Between 1908 and 1915 the Bend Bulletin and other Central Oregon newspapers published numerous articles highlighting the opportunities for dryland farming in the Fort Rock Valley.

[15] For the next five years, Fremont was a busy commercial center with a post office, school, stores, hotel, creamery, cheese factory, blacksmith shop, and livery stable.

On the Fourth of July and other major holidays, people from the local area gathered for community picnics, often at nearby Derrick Cave.

The community also hosted dances, horse races, public book readings, baseball games, and band concerts.

It allowed settlers to claim 320 acres (130 ha) of government land in Central Oregon and parts of other western states.

Commercial advertisements extolled the Fort Rock Valley as having rich loam soil capable of growing bumper crops of wheat as well as apples, cherries, pears, plums, prunes, and berries without the need for irrigation.

[23] Even with the new transportation infrastructure connecting Fremont with the rest of the world, local roads were generally very bad, making supplies difficult to obtain in a timely manner.

For example, there is a record of a 1914 purchase of rye seed bought in Burns, Oregon, 120 miles (190 km) northeast of the Fort Rock Valley.

From there it was shipped by steamer south to San Francisco and then by rail to Reno, Nevada where it was forwarded to Lakeview, Oregon on the newly built Nevada-California-Oregon Railway.

[12][15] Today, the nearest inhabited place is the small unincorporated community of Fort Rock, Oregon, which is located 6 miles (9.7 km) southeast of the Fremont townsite.