The town was located on the banks of the Clark Fork River roughly five miles downstream from present-day Missoula near what is now Frenchtown.

[5] Members of the Bitterroot Salish (or Flathead) Native American tribe often traveled through the Missoula Valley on their way east to bison hunting grounds.

[4][6] As the Salish passed through the valley's narrow eastern and western mouths, members of the Blackfeet tribe would often attack and kill them.

Meriwether Lewis and a small group of men passed through the Missoula Valley and camped near the confluence of Rattlesnake Creek and the Clark Fork on July 4, 1806.

[2][4][6][9] English-Canadian explorer David Thompson visited the area in 1811, and mapped much of the valley and the surrounding peaks (including Mount Jumbo).

[9] In 1841, the Roman Catholic priest Father Pierre-Jean De Smet passed through the Hell Gate Valley, bringing with him what were probably the first wagons and oxen to enter what would eventually become Montana.

[2] A year later, Isaac Stevens, Governor of the Washington Territory (which at the time included western Montana), led a railroad survey party through the valley.

[7][9] Impressed with the suitability of the entire western Montana area for white settlement, Stevens negotiated the 1855 Hell Gate Treaty, signed by the Bitterroot Salish, Pend d'Oreilles, and Kootenai tribes at Council Grove near Hell Gate, which established the Flathead Indian Reservation.

[4][6][8] Peace with the local Native American tribes increased traffic in the area, and the Hell Gate Valley became the preferred transportation route from Montana to the west.

[6][11] Significant numbers of pack mule trains traveled through the valley, eventually leading to the settlement of Hell Gate itself.

[7] They cut timber for the settlement throughout the winter, and in the spring moved to the future site of Hell Gate where they raised cattle and established the first garden and farm in the valley.

[6][7][13][14][15] Higgins had come through the Hell Gate Valley with Governor Isaac Stevens' railroad scouting party in 1853, and now the two men built a log cabin and turned it into a store.

[10] The store was set up in a tent (the town's first structure), but purchased hewn cottonwood tree logs from David Patee, a white settler who had settled near the eastern mouth of the Hell Gate Valley, and quickly built a 16 foot by 18 foot (4.9 meter by 5.5 meter) rectangular building with a sod roof.

[6][7][9] Montana's first trial was also held in the town (in Bolte's saloon) in 1862 (a man sued a local farmer for killing a horse he had leased to him).

[2][21] Goods brought by steamboat up the Clark Fork to the Cabinet Rapids were transported over a new, groomed trail which connected with the Mullan Road just west of town.

[10][22] Camel pack trains took goods and gold regularly over the Mullan Road to the rapidly growing Inland Empire.

[23] In 1863, the discovery of gold at Alder Gulch brought hundreds of settlers to the region, allowing Hell Gate to prosper.

[9][29] In March 1864, several young Pend d'Oreilles Indian men (led by the chief's son) killed a prospector near the town of Clinton, Montana.

[7][10] The Pend d'Oreilles tribe, worried about retaliation, forced their chief to turn his son over to the people of Hell Gate.

[14] But Worden and Higgins built a sawmill, flour mill, and new store at the site of present-day Missoula, and all the residents of Hell Gate moved to the new town practically overnight.

During this time he introduced to Montana McIntosh red apples, Percheron horses, Holstein cattle and several exotic breeds of chickens and pigs.

[10] The site of the ghost town was featured as a stop on a self-guided tour promoted in a guide book to the state of Montana written by the Federal Writers' Project in 1939.