Early traders followed a network of rivers inland from Lake Superior. John Sayer and his men traveled by canoe up the Brule River, down the Saint Croix, and up the Snake River to reach this place. When Sayer arrived in 1804, the best road was only a path in the woods, and most travel was by canoe on lakes and rivers. Sayer and his fellow traders obtained their birchbark canoes from the local Ojibwe, who had been making them for generations. Water travel could be slow and dangerous: to get here, Sayer and his crew had to bring their canoes up the shallow, rocky Snake River, taking four days to cover twelve miles, and in the roughest places they unloaded the canoes and carried the cargo on their backs.