At the junction of the Snake River and the Grande Ronde, the town is set among rocky bluffs of remarkable grandeur and beauty. Here Captain Benjamin Bonneville and his men camped after enjoying a generous reception in the Native American village at the mouth of the Joseph Creek. Bonneville’s notes about the valley inspired Washington Irving’s description of the country.

Rogersburg was born of mining booms and nourished during its vigorous youth by the optimism characteristic of booms. The lower Grande Ronde region has experienced a number of mining stampedes. One of these rushes occurred in 1865 thanks to the story of a fabulous gold strike made five years earlier.

According to that story, in 1860 three men beached their canoes on the bar of Shovel Creek, an insignificant stream emptying into the Snake River. In the morning, they discovered pay dirt so rich that a pailful of nuggets was secured in a short time. Finding themselves short of supplies, the men hid the nuggets and went to Walla Walla to outfit themselves. There, one of them was killed, a second died of natural causes, and the third disappeared.

But the report of the find on Shovel Creek lingered, and with each retelling the nuggets grew larger and more numerous. Prospectors, stimulated by the story, year after year made their way to the creek to search for the cached gold and the rich sands where it was found. In 1865, there was a regular stampede, and for a brief time this small creek in the wilds echoed with the sounds of men at work. Soon, however, the men drifted away as hopes faded; but the story persisted. Succeeding years saw other booms come and go, and with them activity in Rogersburg expanded and contracted. Abandonment of river service in the early twentieth century, however, left the town without any ready means of communication with the outside world until the completion of the Asotin-Rogersburg road in 1938.