Long before the first Euro-Americans entered the Rogue Valley, Native Americans lived in the natural corridor of Bear Creek, fished its waters, and lived along its banks. The area was shared by two tribes: the Shasta and the Takelma.
Both peoples lived on processed acorns, camas and other bulbs, and berries, as well as deer, fish and small game. They stored food for the winter spent in villages along Bear Creek and its tributaries. IN spring, the villages broke into family groups that camped in different resources zones, following game into the hills and mountains, and visiting collection sites for ripe plant foods.
Their first contact with Euro-Americans occurred in 1827 when Peter Skene Odgen led a group of trappers from the Hudson Bay Company into the valley in search of beaver. It wasn't until the 1850s that settlers and miners, spurred by the Donation Land Claims Act of 1850 and lured by tales of fertile land and gold-bearing streams, arrived in large numbers. They dispossessed the Native Americans of their lands and eliminated their food sources.
Gold mining operations polluted streams and killed fish. Settlers fenced and cultivated the bottomland, depriving the Tribes of important hunting and gathering areas. Small game was over-hunted, and tree cutting destroyed much wildlife habitat.
The Native Americans unsuccessfully resisted the loss of their lands, and retaliated against frequent incidents of mistreatment in the uprisings of 1851, 1853, and 1855-56. The treaties that followed each skirmish progressively restricted Native American presence and finally moved them entirely to a reservation on the Oregon Coast.
Settlers planted wheat, hay, and potatoes; raised cattle; and grew other crops to support their needs. In the 18880's, the arrival of the railroad caused major economic change and shifted local agriculture from grains and forage crops to fruit.
Farmers planted orchards throughout the valley achieving success with apples, peaches, and pears. Orchards required more water than the annual rainfall provided, so large irrigation systems were developed during the first half of the 20th century. Today, the Talent Irrigation District provided water through canals from Emigrant, Hyatt, and Howard Prairie reservoirs. The Medford Irrigation District delivers irrigation water from the Rogue River. Just as the production of pears overtook and exceeded apples and peaches in the later part of the 1900s, in the present time growing of wine grapes is a rapidly-developing agricultural trend and beginning to replace the pear orchards in southern Oregon.
Though the early miners found little gold in Bear Creek, it has supplied several generations with gravel to construct the highways that parallel Bear Creek. The ponds along the trail resulted from these gravel operations.
