The Boise Valley long served as a center of life and commerce along the Boise River. For the Shoshone people it offered a salmon fishery, plentiful edible plants, and a generally mild climate, and after they acquired horses from the southwest in the early 1700s they could hunt buffalo and travel to camas grounds to supplement their diet. When Donald Mackenzie and Wilson Price Hunt entered the valley in 1811, they found a Shoshone camp near Table Rock with many horses. Native Americans gathered along the river for festivals and trade, and trappers followed beginning in 1811. The valley's older way of life declined as settlers moved in, disease devastated native populations, and mining clouded the Boise River and reduced salmon runs. Fort Boise, about 45 miles west, was the first Euro-American settlement in the area. After gold was discovered near Idaho City, Boise took root in 1863 as a mining supply town, and as irrigation water later became available and gold played out, it became a center for agriculture. In the mid-1800s the river was still rich with fish, and during the mining boom of the 1860s fertile land near the Boise River was cultivated to feed miners. A large irrigation system completed in the early 1900s brought water to thousands of acres beyond the riverbanks. The pioneers' route through part of the valley followed what is now Boise Avenue, and water remained the backbone of southwestern Idaho's economy, shaping its transformation from a trading and gathering place into a region sustained by agriculture and later industry.