Curlew Valley, named after the curlew snipe that nests there, extends from Snowville, Utah, to the Idaho towns of Stone and Holbrook. The first recorded white men were Peter Skene Ogden‘s large party of trappers that camped on Deep Creek December 27, 1828.

Some of the discharged members of the Mormon Battalion, on their way home from California to Salt Lake City on September 18, 1848, camped on Deep Creek and also in a cave one mile (1.6 km) east called Hollow Rock.

The beginning of Deep Creek is a large spring at Holbrook which runs through the center of the valley and has never varied even in dry years. About one mile (1.6 km) southwest is Rocky Ford, where the pioneers were able to pass on solid rock.

In 1869 William Robbins, Thomas Showell, and William M. Harris settled at the Curlew Sinks, ten miles west of here, where Deep Creek sinks into the ground. The old pioneer trail and the stage line went through their ranch.

The first townsite in the Curlew Valley was Snowville. Settled at the direction of Brigham Young and named in honor of Lorenzo Snow an apostle at the time but later to become the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1898–1901. Snowville was laid out August 14, 1878.