The Missouri River drove the development of Arrow Rock as a center of commerce and transportation. Burton Lawless, one of the founders of the town that would become Arrow Rock, guaranteed access to the river on the 20-foot easement where this trail is built. In the 1840s and 1850s, town ordinances called for bridging the hollow and grading this road to the river landing to ensure river access. From March through October, when the river was free of ice and steamboats were running, commercial traffic from the landing to Main Street never ceased, and the town even attempted to extend Main Street through the bluff directly to the river at an excavation known as Godsey's Diggins. Long before the Lewis and Clark Expedition passed this spot on June 9, 1804, and noted that the Missouri River was about 200 yards wide, the site was a landmark to American Indians, where the Osage trace crossed the river and extended onto the western prairies. In 1821, William Becknell and a small group of men crossed the river near here on what became the first successful trade expedition to Santa Fe, New Mexico. Because the river flowed directly along the Arrow Rock bluff line, this gap in the bluff served as the Arrow Rock steamboat landing from circa 1830 to 1900, and this trail became part of the great immigrant road to the American West. Judge Napton reported a great throng of emigrants through Saline County to California on the river road in 1849 and 1850, and in the early spring of 1850 their covered wagons were hardly ever out of sight at Arrow Rock. Traces of wagon ruts are still visible at the lower end of the trail.