Though a home to wildlife, the canyon has been a mighty barrier to human beings. Archeological evidence indicates that prehistoric man, and later the Utes, used only the canyon rims, never living in the gorge. The first white men to see the great chasm actually were members of the Hayden Expedition in 1873-74. It appears that the Spaniards, including the famed Dominguez Escalante Expedition in 1776, all missed seeing the canyon as they came over the Uncompahgre Plateau and into the Uncompahgre Valley on various journeys of exploration. Even the group led by Capt. John W. Gunnison, whose name has become permanently attached to the river, bypassed the gorge itself in its search for a river crossing. The Hayden Expedition and later surveying parties for the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad all pronounced the Black Canyon "inaccessible."

By the last decade of the 19th century there was much interest in tapping the Gunnison River as a source of water for the Uncompahgre Valley. In 1900 five valley men made a heroic effort to float through the canyon with surveying equipment, but after a month's effort, they had to admit defeat. In 1901 William Torrence and Abraham Lincoln Fellows, learning a lesson from the previous trip, took a rubber mattress for a raft, arranged to be supplied at various points from the rim, and were able to make their way through the canyon -- 33 miles in nine days. From the engineering log the two men kept, it was obvious that an irrigation tunnel was a feasible project. In January 1905 construction work began on the diversion tunnel.

Progress was slow because of the many difficulties that the work crews encountered. Intense heat, violent cascades of water, and unstable rock formations were just a few of the problems the engineers had to deal with. When finished the tunnel measured 5.8 miles long and could carry enough water to irrigate a sizable farming community. Eight years after Torrence and Fellow's trip, on September 23, 1909, President William Howard Taft presided over the dedication ceremonies for the Gunnison Diversion Tunnel, a notable engineering achievement of this or any time.

In the late 1920s, citizens of Montrose and other area towns, led by Rev. Mark T. Warner and local civic groups, began efforts to have the scenic beauty of the canyon preserved as a part of the National Park System. On March 2, 1933, President Herbert Hoover proclaimed Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Monument. Since that time thousands have enjoyed the scenic grandeur of Black Canyon. A smaller number of hardy individuals have hiked to the bottom of the canyon for fishing, rock climbing, and camping. A portion of the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park is classified as wilderness to ensure that the landscape will remain forever in its natural state.