The bridge was originally built in 1889[3] by George Grant Mackay, a Scottish civil engineer and park commissioner for Vancouver.

It was originally made of hemp ropes with a deck of cedar planks and was replaced with a wire cable bridge in 1903.

Annual attendance increased, and in May 2004, Treetops Adventures was opened, consisting of seven footbridges suspended between old-growth Douglas fir trees on the west side of the canyon, forming a walkway up to 30 metres (98 ft) above the forest floor.

On June 6, 2010, a teenage tourist on a class trip from California climbed over a railing and fell more than 30 metres (98 ft) from a fenced-off viewing platform near the bridge.

[13] The bridge has been featured as a setting in episodes of several television series, including MacGyver, Sliders, The Crow: Stairway to Heaven, and Psych.

Dutton and Aron argued that this supported the theory that the men were mis-attributing the arousal caused by fear to sexual attraction toward the woman.