:For articles about other places named Eskdale, see Eskdale (disambiguation).
Formed during the last major ice age, it has a classic U-shaped valley formation caused by the action of glaciers carving away the rock.
The town is home to EskDale High School, which serves EskDale, Garrison, Utah, Burbank, Utah, and Baker, Nevada, along with other locals in the Snake Valley area.
The first sod had been turned in Napier in 1912, but delays meant the line was not opened to Eskdale by the PWD until December 1922 and handed over to the New Zealand Railways Department (NZR) on 23 July 1923.
Rea was the third son of Daniel Key Rea from Eskdale in Cumberland and his wife Elizabeth, who was the daughter of Liverpool shipbuilder Joseph Russell.
The River Duddon flows through the valley, rising in the mountains between Eskdale and Langdale, before flowing into the Irish Sea near Broughton in Furness.
The Cumberland Quarter Sessions (Coroner's Inquests) in 1762 looked into the death of Elizabeth Benson, aged 30, who died walking from Whincop in Birker to Boot in Eskdale, when she tried to ford Birker Beck at the site of a footbridge which had been destroyed by earlier floods, and was swept into the River Esk and drowned.