Sevier Lake is located in the central and western part of the state in the Pahvant Valley at about 4,500 feet elevation, between the Cricket Mountains on the east and the House Range on the west. Earliest reports of the lake indicate that it was a large sheet of water and helped support farms along the shore. The largest tributary feeding the lake is the Sevier River, which drains a large section of south-central Utah in the transition area between the Colorado Plateau and the Basin and Range provinces. The 1776 Dominguez-Escalante party visited the lake and on the map they made showed it and some tributaries. Pahvant Indians are reported to have had farms on the east side of the lake, and the Pahvant Valley acquired the name "Corn Creek" due to the planting of that crop when settlers arrived at the present site of Fillmore in 1850.