For some 40 years in the mid-19th century, two-wheeled wooden carts drawn by oxen traveled rough trails from Red River colonies near Lake Winnipeg to St. Paul, 400 miles to the southeast, in an overland trade that began in 1835 as an illegal effort to bypass the Hudson’s Bay Company monopoly in the Red River of the North region. Within a few years, trains of several hundred carts carried more than $250,000 worth of furs, pemmican, and buffalo robes to St. Paul and brought back food, medicine, dry goods, and other supplies. The carts, with six-foot-high wheels held together by wooden pegs and rawhide, were ungreased and produced a squeal heard for miles. Driven by mixed-blood Bois Brule traders wearing red sashes, beaded caps, and moccasins, they moved about 15 miles a day through mud and mosquitos. Their midsummer arrival in St. Paul became an attraction for steamboat passengers in the frontier city. Over the years the trails changed, with alternative routes used because of weather and because passage through Dakota Indian territory could be dangerous for the Ojibway-related traders. The first trail ran south across the plains of North Dakota, then east into the Minnesota River Valley, and finally north into St. Paul. A later route, the Woods Trail, went up the Mississippi River to the mouth of the Crow Wing River near Brainerd, then west to Detroit Lakes and north into Canada. Another trail followed the Red River to near Moorhead before turning southeast toward St. Paul, and today’s I-94 follows parts of that route. Traces of the old trails can still be found in Otter Tail, Wadena, and Crow Wing counties, as well as in other locations.