The Woods Trail

The Woods Trail. . , Through woodland and prairie, along riverbanks and through sloughs, the mixed-blood American and Canadian buffalo hunters called Metis blazed trails with their oxen and squeaky-wheeled wooden carts. They carried buffalo robes and pemmican from their homes along the Red River of the North to market in St. Paul and then carried supplies back again. The heyday of the complex network of Red River trails lasted from about 1820 to 1872, when the first railroad reached the Red River at Moorhead., The northernmost of the Red River trails ran through forested stretches along a portion of the 400 mile route. It was known as the Woods Trail and passed right through this location. That name was an exaggeration, since only the section from Detroit Lakes to Crow Wing was wooded. South from Pembina the trail crossed the Red and ran along the east bank through low savannah dotted with willow and onto a high and treeless prairie. It followed beach ridges of glacial Lake Agassiz on the eastern border of the Red River Valley, entering the forest at Detroit Lakes. The trail proceeded along the Otter Tail and then the Leaf and Crow Wing rivers to the east until it reached an important stopping point, the village of Crow Wing, which also lent its name to the trail. From there the Crow Wing Trail made its way over sandy prairie on the east bank of the Mississippi to Sauk Rapids, where it merged with the Middle Trail which took a more southerly route toward the Mississippi River, for the rest of the distance to St. Paul.