Over 12,000 years ago the Anasazi people originally used the Mojave Indian Trail, and in prehistoric times it served as a trade route to the sea. South of this area lay the Vanyume village of Atongai, long extinct. Padre Francisco Garces passed here in 1776, trapper and explorer Jedediah Smith in 1826, and Kit Carson in the 1840’s, and the first Mormons and other immigrants also traveled this way. In 1886 appropriation rights made this an important part of Hesperia's first water project, as the siphon from the Deep Creek flume crossed the Mojave River here on its way over the mesa to the reservoir at the now Lime Street Park site. A leak in the siphon formed early Hesperia Lakes, and in 1917 additional wells were needed and dug here.