Alexander Ross, of the Hudson Bay Company, with 55 Indian and white trappers, 89 women and children and 392 horses, camped near here on March 12, 1824, enroute from Spokane House near present Spokane, Washington to the Snake River country in southern Idaho. Nearly a month was spent here in a desperate attempt to break through the deep snow across the pass to the Big Hole, and from their hardships and tribulations, Ross called this basin "The Valley of Troubles."
Originally built in 1921, the Sula Community Store is the center of a rural district established in 1889 by Wood "Longhair" Thompson. Ross' Hole was initially settled by cattle ranchers, including Thompson and his daughter Ursula, from home the community takes its name. By the third decade of the twentieth century, the Sula area included the store/post office, a school, and nearly 200 people. By then, farmers grew crops and tended orchards in the valley. One writer described Sula "a site set like a diamond stud in the the center of the beautiful vale of Ross' Hole, one of the prettiest spots in the Rocky Mountains."
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