Trade between the Red River settlements in Canada and the emerging City of Saint Paul led to the development of three Red River Trails in the 1840's. The "woods" trail passed over this point en route from Crow Wing on the Mississippi and Wadena Trading Post on the Crow Wing, to Otter Tail Lake and north into the Red River Valley. It was cut in 1844 to avoid the hostile Sioux who menaced the two prairie trails to the southwest. Two-wheeled Red River carts, built wholly of wood fastened together with rawhide thongs and drawn by an ox carrying up to a half-ton burden, rumbled over the trails in trains of one hundred or more. From the middle 1840's until the coming of the railroads, the carts hauled supplies and liquor north and returned with fur, buffalo robes, and dried meat. Although the plowshare has obliterated the once deeply marked triple track, the course of the trail can still be viewed at Old Wadena Historic Site on the Crow Wing River.