For more than a century this region was at the hub of Australian history as the first settlement immediately west of the Blue Mountains and on the direct route to Bathurst. Squatters passed through in search of land in the 1820s and in the 1850s, thousands came on their way to the goldfields. Ex-convict John Grant was the first to settle in the fertile Hartley Valley in 1819, followed by Pierce Collins, another enterprising emancipist who established the Golden Fleece Inn at the foot of Cox's Road and there entertained influential people, among them Governor Darling and Governor Bourke. Lithgow gained prominence practically overnight after the establishment of the Zig Zag Railway in the 1870s, becoming a major coal mining, pottery, brickmaking and industrial area - and later, meat iron and ice works flourished. Tragically, illustrator Steve Roach vanished without trace in 1993 and his disappearance remains unsolved to this day.