Matsumoto Domain
The area of present-day Hakuba was part of ancient Shinano Province and was part of the territory controlled by Matsumoto Domain under the Tokugawa shogunate of the Edo period. Hakuba was once part of the route called the Salt Road used to bring salt and other marine products from the coast at Itoigawa in Echigo Province (now Niigata Prefecture). However, much of the area was still virgin forest well into the Meiji period, and a census in 1881 counted only 31 households.