In 1812, Joseph Miller found 100 lodges of Indians spearing thousands of salmon each afternoon at a cascade below here, and each summer they dried a year's supply. After 1842, they also traded salmon to Oregon Trail emigrants. John C. Fremont marveled at Salmon Falls' 18-foot vertical drop, adjacent to "a sheet of foaming water...divided and broken into cataracts" by islands that "give it much picturesque beauty, and make it one of those places that the traveler turns again and again to fix in his memory."