At the meeting of the Mississippi and Crow Wing rivers, this place long served as a crossroads for travel, trade, and hunting, contested by Dakota and Ojibwe communities before becoming a fur-trade center. A trading post founded in 1823 grew into Old Crow Wing, which became one of Minnesota’s most populous towns after the Red River Trails linked it to regional commerce in 1844. Its rapid decline followed Ojibwe resettlement in 1868 and the railroad’s bypass in 1871. Preserved as Crow Wing State Park since 1959, the site holds archaeological remains, historic features, and a landscape that reflects both its town and deeper Indigenous past.