On January 21, 1972 the Wallowa County Gamblers Snowmobile Club was officially organized. The goals of the club were to promote snowmobiling and establish a trail system in Wallowa County. Over the next few years many projects were accomplished, the most time consuming being the trail system between Wallowa and Salt Creek Summit.

      The name Wallowa County Gamblers seems to have two stories behind its origin. The most popular has to do with the amount of poker runs that the club puts on each year. The second is; one night a group of the club founders were out snowmobiling, looking at the night sky and one of them said "we live in a paradise". This was paraphrased to "a pair of dice" resulting in Gamblers.