Chief Looking Glass lived in a village a short distance above what is now Kooskia with his band of Nez Perce.

[9][10][11][12] Starting in 1903,[13] Kooskia was the terminus of an aerial tramway from the elevated Camas Prairie.

It carried up to 190,000 lb (86,000 kg) of grain per day in its thirty buckets and warehouse facilities were present at both ends of the cable line, with a combined capacity of 100,000 US bushels (120,000 cu ft; 3,500 m3).

Following the completion of the Camas Prairie Railroad's second subdivision to Grangeville in 1909, the tramway gradually lost patronage and was discontinued in 1939.

It climbed west-southwest toward Lowe (later Winona); some older maps listed Kooskia as "Tramway.

[6][16] During the final two years of World War II, the Kooskia Internment Camp was located about thirty miles (50 km) northeast of the town.

Originally a remote highway work camp of the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s, it was later run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons and then converted in 1943 to house interned Japanese men, most of whom were longtime U.S. residents, but not citizens, branded "enemy aliens."

It was so remote in the western Bitterroot Mountains that fences and guard towers were unnecessary.

[17][18] The site, now an archaeological project, is six miles (10 km) northeast of Lowell on U.S. 12, on the north bank of the Lochsa River.

[19][20] The Kooskia National Fish Hatchery was established in the 1960s, about 1.5 miles (2.4 km) southeast of the city on the east bank of Clear Creek.