Grave Creek, a tributary of the Rogue River, is aptly named. Here, near the present covered bridge, a young girl named Martha Leland Crowley, who was traveling in the first wagon train to take the newly charted Applegate Trail, died and was buried in 1846. Seven years later, during the early years of the Rogue Wars, it was the site of the Bates House Massacre, in which local militia lured several Indians of the Grave Creek band into the house with the promise of a feast of beef and shot them all. The Army established Fort Leland a few hundred yards north of the crossing, and from here launched the ill-fated Battle of Hungry Hill in 1855.