In 1887, twenty-six-year-old French Canadian farmer Albeni Poirier of Blanchard, Idaho, set out north on foot and by cayuse to find the falls on the Pend Oreille River. Captivated by their beauty, he built a log cabin at the site from which he first saw them, directly across and downstream from here, and went on to build and operate a hotel and eating place for hunters, fishermen, and gold prospectors. After the Great Northern Railroad completed its link to Troy, Montana, in 1892, he added a barn and a combined saloon, dance hall, and blacksmith shop, and fishing and picnicking trips to the falls became popular Sunday outings for travelers from Spokane, Washington. Because many people reportedly could not pronounce his last name, Poirier, the falls came to bear his first name as Albeni Falls. In 1955, Albeni Falls became Albeni Falls Dam after Congress had authorized the project in 1950 and construction began in 1951 to provide water storage and power production for growing shipbuilding and aluminum industries downriver. The dam included a log chute because log drives on the river were still common, with boommen guiding logs through the chute downstream to the mills, and the dam and powerhouse became an important link in the Columbia River hydropower system.