For thousands of years, the land around Kootenai Falls has been explored and used by the Kootenai or Tunaxa people. The Kootenai tribe was made up of seven bands, two in the U.S. and five in Canada. In the early 1800s, European traders and surveyors came to the region, drawn by the land, abundant wildland, and adventure. In 1808, during the fur trade period, David Thompson and four other men in a large canoe came ashore in rain and high winds at the head of the falls, which Thompson called “heavy, long falls between 2 steep hills.” Unable to run the falls, they portaged their canoe and loads across land in a process that took about 15 trips of 1.5 hours each. Father Pierre DeSmet, a Jesuit missionary, explored the region between 1842 and 1847. He first called the surrounding area “a smiling and accessible valley,” but after moving farther upstream and making an eight mile portage around the falls, he said he made the crossing in a “quadrupedal position,” crawling on his hands and knees. After these early explorers, the first development in the Kootenai Valley began with construction of the Great Northern Railroad. Several possible routes were surveyed for a crossing of the Rocky and Cascade Mountains to the Pacific coast, and the northern route was chosen, running along the Kootenai River from Flathead Lake to Spokane, Washington. Production of railroad ties cut from larch and fir created a new industry because untreated timber lasted only 5 to 10 years. The railroad line reached Libby in April 1891. The original highway along the Kootenai River was built between 1912 and 1915 as the Great Parks National Automobile Highway, intended to “open a wagon highway between the east and the west, cutting the country through the center.” Though expected to take one year, construction took three, making it the most expensive stretch of highway built in the northwest. Two remaining segments of the old highway can still be accessed as a trail from Highway 2. A new highway was completed in 1934, and both the highway and the railroad continue to bring travelers into the Kootenai River Valley.