Curator Cathy English presents a "Brown Bag History" © slideshow about the Big Bend Highway project. Following the Columbia River, the Big Bend Highway was completed in late June 1940. The Big Bend area was significant for Indigenous peoples, significant to David Thompson and the fur trade route for several decades in the early 1800s, and in the 1860s for the gold rush north of Revelstoke which saw several million dollars in gold taken out. The miners were asking for trails to be built into the Big Bend territory.