More than a century ago, miners struggled to haul copper ore to this canyon for shipment to smelters. They began with Albert Kleinschmidt's road grade down from their mine, more than a vertical mile above Snake River and more than 30 miles downstream from here. After a steamboat failed in 1891, a railroad, now under water, was built past here to their river landing, but that did not work either. Large ore trucks finally solved the problem in 1968.