 In the late winter of 1834, Captain Benjamin Bonneville crossed the Tucannon on the Nez Perce Trail, surveying the Northwest on behalf of the United States government.A number of wagon roads were built through the area in the 1860s (including one between Walla Walla, Washington, and Lewiston, Idaho, in 1862).Settlers slowly drifted into the Tucannon River area in the 1860s, but in the early 1870s settlement rapidly increased.