For generations, the Hamilton Ranch was widely known as the Carroll Ranch and served as a vital link between the Big Hole and Beaverhead valleys. At the base of this mountain pass, it became a natural stopping point for stagecoaches, cattle drives, and nearly every other kind of traveler through the frontier era and beyond. For years, the ranch kept a team of relief horses for the postal delivery service, and even after motor vehicles became common, bad weather could make the roads impassable and force travelers to stop there. Family members recalled that during the Great Depression, no drifter was turned away hungry. The Carroll Ranch spanned four generations. In 1903, Ann and Frank Carroll traded their homestead in nearby Polaris for a homestead there, and they lived in tents with their eight children while building the first structure, completed just in time for the winter of 1904. Over the years, the family acquired other homesteads and expanded the ranch to about 13,000 acres, from the northeast side of the pass to Jackson. The Carroll family sold the ranch lands in the late 1950s, more than 100 years after their great-grandparents emigrated from Ireland, but the family name endured, and Big Hole Pass is still known locally as Carroll Hill.