Old Wadena Historic District in Wadena County, Minnesota, preserves the area’s earliest known Euro-American activity through archaeological sites tied to fur trading, transportation, town building, and farming. Beginning in 1782, traders established successive fortified posts near the Crow Wing, Partridge, and Leaf Rivers, where trade unfolded amid Ojibwe-Dakota borderland conflict and shifting alliances. In 1856 the original town of Wadena arose at a Red River Trails crossing, with a trading post, post office, and ferry, but declined after the railroad bypassed it in 1871 and the settlement moved south. Nearby, Peter and Angeline Roy created the county’s first farm.