Starved Rock State Park on the Illinois River in north-central Illinois is known for sandstone bluffs and canyons carved by catastrophic glacial flooding and later stream erosion, making it a striking landscape unlike the surrounding plains. The area was important to Native peoples for thousands of years, from evidence of very early human presence to the Kaskaskia village across the river. French explorers passed through in 1673, and La Salle and Henry de Tonty built Fort St. Louis here in 1682. Later associated with a famous but unverified legend, the site became a resort, then a state park in 1912, with many visitor features added by Civilian Conservation Corps crews in the 1930s.