Historic Breckenridge

About 1734, traders employed by the Hudson's Bay Fur Trading Company encountered the headwaters of the Red River of the North at Breckenridge, where the Otter Tail and Bois de Sioux Rivers converge to form that river. Numerous voyagers and explorers traveled by canoe on these waters, and Stephen Long of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Italian explorer Giacomo Beltrami camped nearby while exploring the Red River Valley on an expedition to establish the borderline between Canada and the United States at the 49th parallel. A Dakota Indian village stood here, and from 1820 to 1870 the Metis and their Red River ox carts camped at this halfway point on the journey from Pembina to St. Paul, making it a common tie-up point. Breckenridge in Minnesota Territory was platted in 1857 and named for former Vice President John C. Breckinridge, with the "i" in his name changed to an "e" for an unexplained reason, and that same year Fort Abercrombie in Dakota Territory was established downstream. The first steamboat launch at Breckenridge occurred in 1859, placing it at the forefront of steam navigation on the Red River, and steamboats carried goods and settlers downstream to ports along the river and into Canada while many steamboats and flatboats were built in Breckenridge and nearby McCauleyville. On October 25, 1871, the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad reached Breckenridge and caused a boom by joining the Mississippi River with the Red River of the North and opening a trade corridor into Canada. Low water in 1911 and 1912 ended commercial navigation on the Red River of the North, and although water levels later returned, that navigation never recovered.

Breckenridge, Minnesota · United States