Old Crow Wing

Old Crow Wing. . , Few spots in Minnesota are richer in historical lore than Old Crow Wing. Here in 1768, the Sioux suffered a significant defeat in their long struggle to regain central Minnesota from the invading Chippewa. A British fur trader wintered at the mouth of the Crow Wing River as early as 1771, and by 1823, the American Fur Company may have established a post under Allan Morrison. During the next two decades, he and others like Benjamin F. (“Blue Bear”) Baker, Clement H. Beaulieu, and William A. Aitken operated trading stations here. With the decline of the fur trade in the 1840s, Crow Wing became an outfitting center, serving the oxcart trains on the “woods” Red River Trail, which crossed the Mississippi here. , The 1850s saw Catholic and Episcopal missions established, and the village became headquarters for the powerful Chippewa chief, Hole-in-the-Day, Crow Wing reached its peak in the 1860s, with a population of nearly 600 and thirty or so buildings including another mission, this one operated by German Lutherans. Rotgut whiskey flowed freely; brawling and robbery were commonplace. In 1868, the Indians were removed to the White Earth Reservation, and in 1871, the Northern Pacific Railroad bypassed Crow Wing, building to Brainerd instead. Within a half dozen years, the old trading settlement had become one of Minnesota’s many ghost towns.