In 1844, Mathew Kinkead established the first American-owned cattle ranch in the Rocky Mountains at the junction of the North and South Hardscrabble Creeks. Even before he settled at the mouth of Hardscrabble Canyon, the canyon was an important route used by Native Americans, who came down from the mountains to trade beaver furs for guns, whiskey, and corn at the Buzzard's Roost Trading Post near present-day Wetmore. Major John C. Fremont, known as "The Pathfinder," traveled up Hardscrabble Canyon in 1848 on his ill-fated fourth expedition, guided by "Old Bill" Williams, one of many fur trappers who frequented the Wet Mountains between the 1820s and the early 1840s. "Old Bill" Williams, Kit Carson, Maurice Le Duc, and Uncle Dick Wooten trapped beaver on Hardscrabble Creek, where beaver still live today. Permanent settlers began farming, ranching, and logging on the Hardscrabble Plateau in the 1860s, and in 1863 William Bruce was murdered at his lumber mill on Hardscrabble Creek by the Espinosa Gang. After gold and silver were discovered at Rosita in the Wet Mountains in 1872, the Ute trail up the canyon was turned into a wagon road used to carry supplies and people into the mining district. The road crossed Hardscrabble Creek more than twenty times and was often made impassable by flooding and rock slides. In 1873, the first stagecoaches used the new Hardscrabble Canyon Road, making the trip from Pueblo to Rosita in twelve hours, though passengers sometimes had to dismount and help push at especially steep places. In the early 1900s, horse-drawn buggies and wagons shared the road with automobile travelers, whose cars often overheated and had to be cooled with mountain water.