Part of the original trail was cut out of the forest by the U.S. Army in 1868 to facilitate travel from Leech Lake to White Earth. In the early days, soldiers accompanied paymasters along this road to protect them when periodic payments were made to Chippewa tribal members. All these lands were included in the White Earth Indian Reservation in 1867. In 1889, Congress passed the Rice Treaty, which assigned allotments of land within the reservation to individual Indians. The Clapp Act of 1906 permitted Indians with mixed blood to dispose of their allotted lands. Most Indian landowners then quickly sold their lands, including many tracts with valuable stands of virgin white and red pine. Logging companies removed the timber and then allowed many tracts to revert to the county for delinquent taxes. In 1936, the government selected this area for development as a national wildlife refuge, and since then it has been consolidated through further land acquisition and is now managed as a multiple-use conservation area.