Lake County is in the high desert region known as the Oregon Outback, on the northwestern edge of the Great Basin.

It is home to many large cattle ranches, hay farms, and timber holdings (both public and private), as well as several frontier towns and early 20th-century homesteads.

Although lumber was once a primary economic driver in Lake County, today only one mill remains, at Lakeview.

Pre-Clovis era coprolites found in the Paisley Caves in northern Lake County in 2007 have been radiocarbon dated to 14,300 calendar years before present.

DNA extracted from these human remains bears certain genetic markers found only in Native American populations.

[5] Luther Cressman found prehistoric artifacts in the Fort Rock Caves of northern Lake County in 1938, including basketry, stone tools,[6] and a cache of woven sagebrush bark sandals which have been dated to more than 10,000 years ago.

In 1832, the Hudson Bay trappers under John Work were in the Goose Lake Valley and their journals mentioned Hunter's Hot Springs.

[8] In 1838, Colonel J. J. Abert, a U.S. engineer, prepared a map that includes Warner Lakes and other natural features using information from the Hudson Bay trappers.

[10] Disputes over grazing rights, exacerbated by the introduction of wheat farming, led to the eruption of range wars between cattle ranchers and sheep herders.

According to the Oregon History Project, 2,300 sheep were killed in a single night in April 1904 in Lake County.

[11] Lake County grew with the arrival of homesteaders, but the dry climate made for challenging development.

During the 1840s and 1850s the county was part of the military courier route between The Dalles on the Columbia River and the Presidio in San Francisco.

That railroad spur, the Nevada–California–Oregon Railway line running from Lakeview to Reno, Nevada, emphasized the isolation of the county from the rest of Oregon.

The Barry Point Fire burned 92,977 acres (376.26 km2) of public and private forest land along the California border.

Crack in the Ground, northeast of Christmas Valley is a long fissure with ice in its floor year round.

Big Hole, Hole-in-the-Ground, and Fort Rock are ancient maar craters in the northwestern part of the county.

Though Lake County is located in central Oregon, politically it falls in line with the eastern side of the state.

The economy in Lake County is reliant on lumber, agriculture, natural resource extraction, health care, a prison[46] and government.

Lumber and wood products are taken from the Fremont National Forest, Bureau of Land Management properties and private landholdings.

The Collins Companies operates the last remaining mill in the area, the Lakeview sawmill, and is also a large landowner in the region.

[citation needed] A railroad line ships timber products and perlite to Burlington Northern's rail hub in Alturas, California.

Tourism is a growing industry because of the county's many attractions which include Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge, Hunter's Hot Springs, Goose Lake, Warner Canyon, hanggliding[52] and areas for rock hunting.

The "world's oldest shoes" were found here in 1938, changing the dates range scientists believed that humans inhabited the far west from 4,000 years ago.

[55] Several subsequent discoveries of even older sandals in the northern Great Basin confirmed the importance of archaeologist Luther Cressman's work.

For this find, and for other research that broke down standing theories about the nature of the prehistoric Northwest, Cressman became known as the father of Oregon archaeology.

Glass Buttes are high desert mountains in northeastern Lake County named for the large deposits of obsidian found on their slopes.