The Coeur d’Alene people were the earliest inhabitants of this area, where the forests, rivers, and lakes sustained their existence for countless generations across five million acres of ancestral land. Their way of life was forever altered after gold was discovered in the Idaho pan handle in 1860. In 1873 they were forced onto a reservation, which was then repeatedly reduced through concessions as land was taken for homesteading. One of those concessions involved the establishment of Heyburn State Park. Idaho’s junior U.S. Senator Weldon B. Heyburn considered it urgent to make part of the Coeur d’Alene Indian Reservation a national park before it opened to homesteaders in 1909, and Theodore Roosevelt signed the Congressional Act into law on April 20, 1908. The federal government then changed its position and decided against creating a national park, so Idaho purchased 7,838 acres from the Department of the Interior for $1.45 per acre, creating a state park, the first in the northwest. From 1934 to 1942, Civilian Conservation Corps Company 1995 carried out major improvements to visitor access and recreational resources, including building the Chatcolet campground, developing the water distribution system, constructing many park trails and roads, and erecting many structures still in use.