In late September 1805, Captain Lewis and part of the Corps of Discovery reached this meadow cold and hungry after an eleven-day, 100 mile struggle over rough, hilly mountains in worn moccasins, climbing over fallen trees and through log-strewn creek bottoms. After camping at what is now called Pheasant Camp, Lewis led the party on through gentler meadows and rolling hills to the Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) camp near present-day Weippe on September 22, 1805. The three pheasants mentioned by Sgt. Patrick Gass were actually ruffed grouse, birds now often seen in deciduous and mixed woodlands. On September 21, 1805, Gass wrote that the party moved along the ridge with great difficulty and fatigue, slowed by fallen dead timber, that their horses were weak and jaded, and that after going about a mile down a creek they camped for the night in a small rich bottom, where they killed a duck and two or three pheasants, ate them with the last of their horse meat, also killed and ate a wolf, and were not joined that evening by the hunters or by the two men sent to look for the horse.