The Lolo Trail crossed the Bitterroot Mountains on a well-used Indian route through rugged country long associated with the Nimiipuu and earlier Sal-wah’-poo villages near the Middle Fork of the Clearwater. In September 1805, Meriwether Lewis, William Clark, and the Corps of Discovery traveled this high trail above the Lochsa River canyon, struggling through early snow and barely reaching the prairies near Weippe, where the Nimiipuu helped them continue westward. In 1831 Hudson Bay Company trader John Work crossed the trail with a Nimiipuu guide, losing horses in deep snow, and trapping became an important activity in the mountains for many years. Lieutenant John Mullan explored the route in 1854 for a possible military road but abandoned the idea because of the difficult terrain. The 1855 treaty with the Nez Perces included all of the Lolo Trail in Idaho within a reservation that covered most of the Nimiipuu homeland, but the 1863 treaty reduced that reservation to one tenth its former size. After gold was discovered at Pierce in 1860, Congress in 1866 ordered construction of a wagon road over the trail to carry freight from Lewiston to Montana mining towns, but the builders gave up after three miles and made a graded pack trail instead. In 1877 five bands of Nimiipuu driven from their homeland crossed the Lolo Trail seeking refuge among the Crow in Montana as General O.O. Howard and the U.S. Army pursued them, a passage that for many marked the last sight of their homeland and the end of life as they had known it. Later milestones included the creation of the Selway-Bitterroot Forest Reserve in 1898, construction of the Lolo Motorway from 1930 to 1934 and U.S. Highway 12 from 1919 to 1962, and federal recognition through historic trail and landmark designations from 1962 to 1986.