The landscape around Lolo Creek changed greatly after Lewis and Clark first saw it in September 1805, when it was the aboriginal territory of the Nez Perce and Salish people, whose impact on natural ecological processes was less than that of the European settlers who followed. European settlers first tried and failed to build a railroad across these mountains in 1854 (sic). In 1908, the U.S. Government granted the Northern Pacific Railroad alternate sections of land along its proposed route, creating a checkerboard ownership pattern along Lolo Creek. Although the railroad was never built, Northern Pacific kept the land and over time sold its holdings to various interests, with Plum Creek Timber Company eventually coming to own most of the private land in the Lolo Creek drainage. Timber companies logged the privately owned alternate sections. In the early 1990's, efforts began to put Lolo Creek back together and restore the landscape. When Plum Creek shifted from logging to selling land, the Nature Conservancy and Trust for Public Land worked with the company and reached an agreement to purchase these and other lands in Montana. Under the Montana Legacy Project, the Conservancy held the lands until they could be conveyed to public and private conservation owners. In 2010, 29,898 acres of former checkerboard land in the Lolo Creek drainage were conveyed to the Lolo National Forest, and the Forest Service began a restoration program to manage them in a way more consistent with natural ecosystem processes. Though the land will never be as pristine as it was in the time of the Nez Perce and Salish, the Montana Legacy Project began restoration intended to restore and sustain it for future generations. As of August 2013, the project had added 132,699 acres of former Plum Creek Timber Company land in Montana to the National Forest System, including about 29,900 acres, or almost 47 square miles, in the Lolo Creek drainage.