Red River Trails - End of The Trails

End of The Trails

At times, some ox cart trains did not go all the way through, but were supplemented by river craft. First flatboats and then shallow-draft steamboats ascended the Minnesota River to Traverse des Sioux and upstream points, where they were met by cart brigades travelling the West Plains Trail. In 1851, weekly steamboat service on the Mississippi began between Saint Anthony Falls and Sauk Rapids on the Middle and Woods trails. In 1859, steamboat machinery was carried overland to the Red River where a boat was built, but service was intermittent. The Dakota War of 1862 and the American Civil War delayed further improvements.

After the Civil War, the age of steam came to the region. After Ojibwe title to the Red River Valley had been extinguished on the United States side of the Canadian border by the Treaty of Old Crossing in 1863, steamboat service was revived on the Red River, and railways were built west from Saint Paul and Duluth, Minnesota on Lake Superior. A branch of the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad reached St. Cloud in 1866. Its mainline reached Willmar in 1869 and Benson, Minnesota the following year. Each end-of-track town in its turn became the terminus for many of the cart trains. In 1871, the railway reached the Red River at Breckenridge, where revived steamboat service carried the traffic the rest of way to Fort Garry. The long trains of carts drawn by oxen were replaced by railway trains powered by steam, and the trails reverted to nature.

A few traces of the vanished trails still exist. Some local roads follow their routes; depressions in the landscape show where thousands of carts once passed, and even after more than a century of winters and springs, freezing and thawing the land, there are still places where soils remain compacted and resistant to the plow. Some of these subtle artifacts are marked or are visible to one with a discerning eye, but in most places the trails have been obliterated. Their locations are noted at parks and wayside signs, and trail locations near Baxter, St. Hilaire, and West Union, Minnesota are recognized on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.