The Mossman Gorge Centre is the gateway to the valley which is a tourist attraction with a suspension bridge providing access to a 2.4-kilometre (1.5 mi) loop walk through the rainforest of the National Park.

The Eastern Kuku Yalanji (Goo-goo Ya-lan-gee) people have occupied this area for thousands of years prior to first contact.

In 1872, William Hann was commissioned by the Queensland Government to explore Cape York Peninsula to assess its mineral and land resources.

[13][8] With the help of Native Police patrols, European settlement expanded along the coastal belt, and extensive areas of lowland rainforest were cleared.

The Native Police officer reported that they had found the Aboriginal peoples "exceedingly daring and threatening" and ‘"had to disperse them on 3 or 4 occasions".

At the newly established Port Douglas, it was reported in a newspaper, with reference to the Native Police, that:[15]"Sub-Inspector Douglas had paid the settlement a visit and ‘succeeded in driving about a dozen blackfellows into the sea, a few miles south of this place, and shortly after some desultory firing took place in a scrub close by, the result of which is not known’"Vast amounts of cedar were harvested from the Mossman River and Daintree River valleys during the 1870s, resulting in further clashes between the Kuku Yalanji and the settlers.

[16][8] In 1880, the Native Police were sent to the Mossman River after Aboriginal peoples attacked a Chinese camp and speared to death one of the occupants.

[8] Selector Daniel Hart from the Mossman River wrote to the Queensland Premier in 1889, stating that, since the Europeans had taken all the land in the district, the Aboriginal peoples were being driven to starvation, which forced them to steal food, which then resulted in reports to the police.

[25] Some of the Kuku Yalanji who had survived the onslaught of European settlement and had not been removed by the government, gradually moved to the Mossman Gorge Mission.

Initially, Hetherington and her companion Ethel Vale lived in a humpy and undertook the heavy manual work of clearing dense scrub, planting gardens and establishing a school.

As the mission was not recognised by the government, it was often without funds, but the missionaries carried out ministerial duties including conducting funerals, and tending to the sick.

After Seventh Day Adventist missionary, Jardine Green, departed from the Daintree Camp in 1940, Pastor William Arehurst and his wife, who belonged to the Assemblies of God church, offered to take over and establish a mission station near the old reserve.

During his time, Davidson made several unsuccessful attempts to increase his control over the Aboriginal people on the mission by requesting to be appointed a superintendent.

The Director of Native Affairs Office, however, would only appoint a superintendent if the land on which the mission was situated was gazetted as an Aboriginal reserve.

[37] Fauna commonly observed in the gorge includes the Australian brushturkey, orange-footed scrubfowl, the brilliant metallic-blue Ulysses butterfly and the Boyd's forest dragon.

Further locally abundant species of trees include the native nutmeg Myristica insipida, several lilly pillies (genus Syzygium), and lining the Mossman River and the creek banks the golden penda Xanthostemon chrysanthus.