Old Crow Wing, Minnesota
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Old Crow Wing is a ghost town in Crow Wing County, Minnesota, United States at the confluence of the Mississippi and Crow Wing Rivers. For over a century it was the northernmost European settlement on the Mississippi, and in the 1850s and 1860s it was the county seat and one of the major population centers of the state. At its peak there were an estimated 600-700 residents, about half of them Ojibwa. The town site, including one restored house, is preserved within Crow Wing State Park.
The first white settler in Crow Wing was Allan Morrison, who opened a trading post in 1823. Around this time a lucrative if technically illegal trade formed between Saint Paul, Minnesota and the Red River Colony in Canada. Many of the traders were Métis, the biracial children of whites and Ojibwa. Since the Red River Trails crossed territory of the Dakota, the Ojibwa's traditional enemy, conflicts dogged the trade. A Métis attack on the Dakota in 1844 closed the primary route entirely. A Red River ox cart train on its return trip north traveled instead to the growing town of Crow Wing, forded the Mississippi, and blazed a new route that passed through much friendlier Ojibwa lands. This route became known as the Woods Trail. Although it was considerably harder going than the other Red River Trails, it was decidedly safer, and more traffic followed, particularly whenever relations with the Dakota were at their worst.
The village of Crow Wing became the principal supply station on the Woods Trail. Allan Morrison began operating a ferry across the Mississippi at the north end of town, and in the 1840s other traders set up shop as well. Allan and his brother William Morrison, William Alexander Aitkin, and Henry Mower Rice all went on to such prominence that Minnesota's Morrison County, Aitkin County, and Rice County were named after them. Another successful trader was Clement Beaulieu, a Métis who ran the American Fur Company's trading post. Another biracial resident, William Whipple Warren, interviewed Ojibwa elders and published his classic History of the Ojibway People in 1852. Warren married William Aitkin's daughter and served in the territorial legislature. Several important Ojibwa leaders lived in Crow Wing, including Curly Head, Hole in the Day, Hole-in-the-Day II, and Strong Ground. Henry Rice negotiated with them for logging rights, and logging became a significant industry in Crow Wing.
The U.S. Military established Camp Ripley nearby in 1848. In 1849 Clement Beaulieu had a house built for himself and his wife Elizabeth with Greek Revival architecture. Father Francis Xavier Pierz established a Catholic mission in Crow Wing in 1852. An Episcopal mission was built in 1856, and a Lutheran church soon after.
Two events brought Crow Wing's heyday to a swift end. In 1868 the Ojibwa, including Clement and Elizabeth Beaulieu, were resettled in the White Earth Indian Reservation. In 1871 railroad magnate James J. Hill decided to route his Northern Pacific Railway over the Mississippi River in Brainerd, ten miles to the north. A year later Brainerd became the county seat. By 1880 most of Crow Wing's residents had moved on. Two of Beaulieu's nephews moved their uncle's former house to Morrison County, where it was inhabited continuously into the 1980s. Its last private owners donated the house to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources and it was moved back to its original location in 1988.
[edit] Further reading
- Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. Crow Wing State Park signage, brochures, and website.
- Voigt, Robert J. Crow Wing and Father Pierz. Diocese of St. Cloud: St. Cloud, MN, 1989.
[edit] External links
- Crow Wing State Park official website.
|
||||||||||||||||||||
