Before the railroad arrived the lower Clark Fork River valley was very quiet, traveled seasonally by the local Salish and Kootenai peoples and then by the occasional fur trapper and adventurer following on the heels of David Thompson. Steep mountains, rain, snow, and river rapids made travel challenging. Camps were temporary, used only for berry picking, camas digging, fishing and hunting. They then moved on. Originally a railroad town on the Northern Pacific, the North Pacific Railway reached Heron in 1882.