Before 1860, the John Day Country was inhabited only by Northern Paiute Indians and a few mountain men. Cavalry troops traveled through the John Day River drainage seeking the best route from the Columbia River to Fort Boise, and in 1861 one company under Captain John M. Drake explored along Bridge Creek. Near this spot, the troopers found the first fossilized bones and leaf-prints known from the John Day Valley. The Dalles-Canyon City Military Road, built in 1864, linked the Canyon City gold camps with settlements along the Columbia River. Thomas Condon, a Congregational minister in The Dalles and an avid naturalist, understood the importance of Drake’s fossil discovery, joined a military patrol to the region in 1865, and encountered the fossil treasures that became his life work. He later became the first State Geologist in 1872 and Professor of Geology at the University of Oregon in 1876.