Lake Hope was discovered by the Stuckey brothers in October 1859 and given that name "because we hope for better fortune in the future". It was also known as Lake Pando. After having been shown around the area by Stuckey, Thomas Elder together with Bedford Hack and Henry Dean took up a pastoral lease over the area in 1860. Henry Dean was made manager of the station. Despite large stock holdings (21,000 sheep are recorded as being shorn in one season) the station was unprofitable with Dean and Hack earning little more than their own livelihoods. Lake Hope was amalgamated in 1872 into Elder's Beltana property.

The local Aboriginal people, dispossessed by the pastoralists and their flocks, caused unrest; taking reprisals after their camps had been destroyed by Henry Dean a group of Aboriginal men attacked Dean and his men and several were severely wounded with one man dying of his wounds. T. Adams was one of this party but escaped uninjured As a result a police station was finally opened at Lake Hope in 1865. Samuel Gason was one of the police troopers and he compiled a dictionary of the language of the local Dyari people.  Lake Hope is east of Lake Eyre.

Cockburn, R Pastoral pioneers of South Australia Blackwood, S.A.: Lynton Publications, [1974] [Facsimile ed.] / indexed by A. Dorothy Aldersey. Isolated references to Lake Hope can be found in the index: vol. 2 p. 175 brief mention of T. Adams

Gason, Samuel The Dieyerie tribe of Australian Aborigines [Adelaide: State Library, 1979]

South Australian History: Lake Hope and Kopperamanna Police Station

The Manning Index of South Australia History see Hope, Lake

Early South Australian pastoral industry