Established in 1864, Malad is one of the oldest communities in the state of Idaho. The community received its name from Donald Mackenzie, a Scottish-Canadian trapper, who passed through the valley between 1818 and 1821 with a party of trappers. Some of his men became sick while camped here and, believing that the illness was caused by drinking water from the valley's principal stream, he named it "Malade" meaning sick or bad in the French language. Actually, the water had nothing to do with the men's illness, as it was later learned by the second party led by Jim Bridger between 1832 and 1835. The men had most likely eaten some beaver that fed on the poisonous roots of water hemlock trees that put a naturally occurring cicutoxin into the animals' flesh. The beaver would have likely been immune to the poison because of long-term adaptation, but the trappers suffered from their feast. Native tribes avoided this outcome by altering food preparation methods to include boiling, which apparently deactivated the poison.