Métis, mixed-blood American and Canadian buffalo hunters, blazed Red River trails with oxen and squeaky-wheeled wooden carts through woodland and prairie, along riverbanks, and through sloughs as they carried buffalo robes and pemmican from their homes along the Red River of the North to market in St. Paul and brought supplies back again. The complex network of Red River trails was at its height from about 1820 to 1872, when the first railroad reached the Red River at Moorhead. The northernmost route, known as the Woods Trail, ran through forested stretches along part of its 400 mile course and passed through this location. Despite its name, only the section from Detroit Lakes to Crow Wing was wooded. From Pembina the trail crossed the Red and followed the east bank through low savannah dotted with willow and onto high treeless prairie, then followed the beach ridges of glacial Lake Agassiz along the eastern border of the Red River Valley before entering the forest at Detroit Lakes. It continued along the Otter Tail and then the Leaf and Crow Wing rivers eastward to the village of Crow Wing, an important stopping point that also gave the trail another name. From there the Crow Wing Trail crossed sandy prairie on the east bank of the Mississippi to Sauk Rapids, where it joined the Middle Trail for the rest of the journey to St. Paul.