For centuries, animals and people used the solid footing and shallow water at Traverse des Sioux as a natural river crossing. Over time it became a place where people met and traded goods, and European fur traders established trading houses there to take advantage of the location. Some of the earliest ox-cart routes crossed the Minnesota River at this point, and by the early 1850s steamboats from St. Paul were passing by with supplies for the territory's new towns and settlements. Although the trip from St. Paul to Traverse des Sioux can be made today in under 90 minutes, in 1854 the same journey by steamboat took a tedious two-and-a-half days, with one St. Anthony Express correspondent complaining about the boat's slow progress against the current.