The Sinix't name for the bay mean "the place to make canoes" because the large cottonwoods made excellent dugouts.

In 1897, a townsite called Rosenheim was cleared, and a hotel built, for a planned railway linking with Camborne and Trout Lake, but the project evaporated within a year.

People also took up Crown land grants of 65 ha (160 acres) up Hill Creek and across the bay on the east side.

This lot was eventually sold to John Nelson, who became famous for buying the paddle-wheeler Minto in a derelict condition and letting it deteriorate on his foreshore until BC Hydro built the Keenlyside Dam in 1967 and ordered the ship removed prior to the flooding of the new reservoir.

A road—they called it a highway, but it was not—was built from Nakusp, around Galena Bay with a timber bridge across Hill Creek, and across the peninsula to the ferry landing.

In 1967-1968, BC Hydro raised the lake about 50 meters to create a reservoir as part of the Columbia River Treaty with the United States of America.