How it All Began The Western States Trail finds its origins with the Native People who lived as hunters and gatherers as part of sophisticated trade and seasonal migration patterns who moved across the Great Basin from what is modern-day Utah into northern Nevada, California and the mountains around Lake Tahoe. From their various ancestral homes, these routes of seasonal migration proved key. The Washoe people, for example, traveled to the shores of Lake Tahoe “ Da ow aga” (“edge of the lake”) to harvest spring plants, to pick berries and seeds that had both nutritional and medicinal value and to catch the lake’s native fish. With the arrival of white explorers and settlers years and years later, the footprints of the Native People would prove to be a guide, a link through the wilderness, and would aid another group of people on their journey.