As the last ice glaciers in the area melted nearly 12,000 years ago, Native Americans began occupying the Mississippi River and its valleys, where they fished, hunted, gathered plants, grew crops, swam, and traveled along a river that was sacred and served as transportation, a source of food, and home. The name Mississippi came from the Ojibwe word Messippi, meaning "river spread over a large area." Spanning 2,320 miles through ten states, the river was known by different Native tribes through names meaning such things as "mother of rivers," "big, greasy river," and "great river," and its fertile silt supported large agricultural societies. French, British, and American settlers later claimed the river, and Native peoples were slowly forced away as settlers established fishing camps, trading posts, and small towns along it. Since prehistoric times the Mississippi has carried people and goods, helping determine where people settled, especially where other rivers and streams met it. In the 1700s, Cliff Cave served the French as a riverside tavern for traders traveling the Mississippi, and in the mid-1800s a nearby marina drew picnics and family gatherings. The cave also became a stop on the Iron Mountain Express, a railroad line opened in the mid-1800s to carry iron ore from Iron Mountain, Missouri, to St. Louis, and an active railroad line still runs through the park and connects to thousands of additional miles of railroad. The land now within Cliff Cave Park has been used in many ways since the late 1820s: the Cliff Cave Wine Company bought it in 1868 and produced 3,000 gallons of wine per year before failing; the Sun Canyon swimming pool later occupied a valley below the cave during the first half of the twentieth century, with spring-fed water that was very cold and strongly smelled of materials; and St. Louis County opened Cliff Cave County Park in 1977. Twin Hollow Associates farms nearby land and donated more than 300 acres to the park, and Bussen Quarries, Inc. donated crushed rock to raise the parking area above the floodplain.