Native peoples occupied the Little Bitterroot River Valley and used its healing hot springs long before European trappers and traders encroached on local resources. In 1855, an 80-acre area around the hot springs was set aside as a government reserve. In 1910, when the Flathead Reservation opened to homesteading and the sale of tribal allotments, along with land of early settler Ed Lamereaux, it became the townsite of Hot Springs. Originally platted as Pineville, the town lies astride Warm Springs Creek within the modern borders of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Indian Reservation. European-American settlers also used the hot springs, and residents served visitors seeking curative mineral waters. Businessman Fred Symes bought this property in 1929 and built a $50,000 Mission style hotel, completed in early 1930, with a curvalinear roofline, quatrefoil windows, stuccoed walls, twenty baths, ivory enamel finishings, and doctors' services on the premises. The Symes remained successful through the Great Depression, with expansion and improvements continuing through the 1930s and into the mid-1940s. In the 1950s, the popularity of hot springs across Montana began to decline. The closing of the tribally owned Camas Hot Springs in 1973 was a blow, and the local population, once 5,000, fell to 411 by 1990. Under new ownership and in partnership with the Hot Springs Artists Society, Inc., the Symes Hotel now hosts local events and again contributes vitally to the community.