In 1863, gold miners rushing to Wild Horse in British Columbia were paddled across this river by Indians, and in 1864 E.L. Bonner established a proper ferry here. The ferry and its trading store served the Wild Horse packtrains for many years. In the 1880's, streamers, the first tiny one dragged in overland, came to the river, and the Great Northern Railway arrived in 1892. A thriving town soon sprang up where once the ferryman and his family had been the only white people.