The waters of Rock Creek and the grass along its banks provided a welcome oasis for travelers crossing the arid Snake River Plain, making the area a favorite camping site for Oregon Trail emigrants and a crossroads in the development of nineteenth century roads. In 1864, Ben Holladay chose this site for a home station on his Overland State Line. The U.S. Army established Camp Reed nearby in 1865 to protect travelers, and James Bascom built the Rock Creek Store, which soon became a popular stopping place for emigrants, freighters, miners, and cowboys. On August 31, 1888, Sarah Hall Pullman wrote that Rock Creek Store was a great blessing to emigrants because they could buy flour for themselves and feed for their starving teams. Herman Stricker purchased the store in 1876 and remained its proprietor until it closed in 1897. One of the cellars behind the store served as the area's first jail. In 1878, Chief Buffalo Horn and his followers camped in the vicinity only days before the start of the Bannock Indian War. Stricker and his wife, Lucy, built the house just east of the store in 1900, replacing one destroyed by fire the previous year, and a small nearby cemetery contains the graves of three emigrants.