The Red River Ox Cart Trail

The Red River Ox Cart Trail. . More than 100 years ago, the famed Red River Ox Cart Trail passed along here, following closely the route of St. Anthony Avenue into St. Paul. The trail began as two early traces -- the East Plains Trail and the Woods Trail -- far to the north at Pembina and the Red River settlements. The trails joined at the mouth of the Sauk River near St. Cloud, and wound south east of the Mississippi.

The first ox cart train was brought south in 1844 by Norman W. Kittson, trader for the American Fur Company at Pembina. Six picturesque two-wheeled ox-drawn carts carried $1,400 in pelts and left some $12,000 in the tills of St. Paul merchants. Within twenty years, carts were annually hauling more than $250,000 worth of pelts, pemmican, buffalo robes, foodstuffs, and other goods to St. Paul. There cargo was unloaded at warehouses, repacked, and sent downriver by steamboat to St. Louis for shipment east.

The sturdy wooden carts had six-foot wheels held together by wooded pegs and rawhide. Ungreased, they set up a squeal heard for miles. Their drivers, the colorful Bois Brules, wore coarse blue cloth, brass buttons, red sashes, beaded caps and moccasins. Caravans left the Red River in June, arrived in St. Paul some 30 days later. The drivers loaded the carts with food, medicines, hardware, liquors, tobacco and dry goods, then headed north again.