An old emigrant road headed west across Camas Prairie and then descended to the valley below on its way to rejoin the Oregon Trail 28 miles west of here. This route, discovered by Donald Mackenzie's fur trade party in 1820, came into use for emigrant wagons in 1852. Indian hostility along the regular Oregon Trail to the south led Timothy Goodale to bring a large emigrant party of Idaho pioneers this way in 1862, and after that, the road was known as Goodale's Cutoff.