Do you have a story about the Red River Oxcart Trail?

 Minneapolis Riverfront Partnership wants to hear from you!

The Red River Oxcart Trail was an important route in the fur trade in the mid-1800s. Traders moved furs and buffalo hides from Pembina, near the Canadian border, to St. Paul, where they were shipped east.  The children of European traders and American Indian women were central to this trade, thanks to their language skills, social ties and knowledge of the land.  Others used the trail too, including statesmen, soldiers and eventually settlers seeking homesteads to the north.

The Minneapolis Riverfront Partnership is developing an audio bike tour for a portion of the trail that followed the Mississippi River from Anoka to St. Anthony Falls. We are learning about local connections to the trail, and we’d like to hear from you.  Are you descended from someone who traveled the trail?  Have you heard stories about family members who worked in the fur trade?  Do your neighbors still talk about the days when oxcarts caravans came through town?  Please tell us about it.  Contact us at oxcart@minneapolisriverfront.org