At the base of the Hervey Range, at least one hotel was established in 1866 to service the increasing number of people and stock travelling along this early inland transportation route, and as a result a small community developed.

By the early 1880s, the introduction of the Great Northern railway to Charters Towers resulted in a reduction in traffic along the road.

[2]: 1  The district comprised 51,000 square miles, extending to the north beyond present day Cardwell, west to the Great Dividing Range, and south beyond Mackay.

[4]: 218  The Range Hotel was a long single storey timber structure with a gable roof and front rooms opening onto the verandah.

[5] The hotel was "very pleasantly situated" and "the proprietor has added to the natural beauty by planting some Leichhardt trees around the house which looked very graceful".

[1][6] The second proprietor, Robert Williamson, was also a carrier and is said to have been the first person, along with John Melton Black, to have taken wagons through Thorntons Gap.

[1][4]: 218 In March 1866, a government gang started improving the road, although nothing was done to lessen the steepness of the ascent to Thorntons Gap.

[7]: 86  The cost to carriers regularly using the road was high – 3 shillings for a two-wheeled dray or wagon, drawn by three or four horses, or four bullocks – prompting teamsters to find an alternate route inland.

By the following year, the toll on Hervey Range Road had been removed altogether, and it was again being used by carriers, teamsters and travellers journeying inland and on to the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Although the introduction of the railway from Townsville to Charters Towers reduced traffic on the Hervey Range Road in the 1880s, it remained a vital link with cattle stations in the inland and northern regions of the district.

[1] The camping reserve comprises some 464 hectares in the Hervey Range, approximately 36 kilometres (22 mi) southwest of Townsville.

Cocky apple (Planchonia careya) and native Gardenia (Kailarsenia ochreata) are common woodland species in the area.

The inscription reads:Sacred to the Memory of Francis John Earl Died at the Range Hotel On the 12th March 1866 Aged 25 years In the midst of life we are in death (verse illegible)2.

[1] A dense concentration of archaeological material is located south of the former Hervey Range Road and the power transmission lines on the high bank of a creek.

The road is one of the few surviving examples of a roadway dating from early European settlement in the region and was the initial route inland from the port of Townsville to the hinterland areas.

The remains of the original route comprises one of only a few surviving examples of a roadway from the earliest European settlement period in north Queensland.

[1] The site has potential to reveal important information relating to the development and survival of a small community during the period of early settlement in north Queensland.

There is archaeological potential for substantial remains of the former Range Hotel and an associated settlement to be located near the site of the identified bottle dump and burial grounds.

Analysis of archaeological artefacts will help inform on the Eureka Hotel, which is situated at the top of Hervey Range and linked to this place by the old Hervey Range Road, and provide important comparative data for the artefacts recovered from other early hotel sites across Queensland.

The Range Hotel burial ground contains sandstone headstones that are highly characteristic of nineteenth century cemeteries in this region, with relatively ornate decoration typically found on graves dating from before c.1880.

There is potential that the recorded burial ground contains additional graves (possibly as many as 21) which also date to the earliest European settlement of the Townsville region.

[1] The site have potential for archaeological deposits associated with travellers journeying to and from the Charters Towers Goldfields and inland pastoral properties.

Analysis of these archaeological remains will provide important insights into the materials being transported and used by the diverse range of peoples transiting to and from the area since 1865, but especially to the Charters Towers Goldfields from 1872.