Sherburne County Heritage Center Interpretive Plan Final Report 2005

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Interpretive Station Matrix Exhibit Station: 1 Topic: Orientation to Site and Red River Ox Cart Trails Story: A canopied outdoor kiosk located near the parking lot and the Heritage Center will have three major goals: provide initial orientation to the SCHS and its purposes and the main theme of the Heritage Center; provide initial orientation to visitor options; and introduce people to the theme of transportation in Sherburne County, with the ox cart trail as a feature. The kiosk will be a tourist magnet and the launching pad for further exploration within the Heritage Center, the trails, Bailey Station, and other features on the trails. SCHS Mission The mission and purposes of SCHS should be identified here. Main Theme The main theme will be incorporated into an introduction: Sherburne County's distinctive location on the edge of three major ecosystems shaped and continues to shape the lives of its people, jut as its people continue to shape the land. Red River Ox Cart Story The outlines of the cart story are discussed in Gilman, The Red River Trails. As quoted in Gilman, p. 14, an observer rode ahead so he could "look back at the line extending far over the plain, the spare cattle following, and horses galloping about with very Cossack -looking prickers after them, and the train winding its way, like a great snake, coming along very slowly, and then, when it got near enough, to hear the carts which, at a distance, sounded not unmusically, and then the lowing of the cattle, and the songs and voices of the men, until they at last got too near, and then it was bedlam again." Sherburne County was on the Metropolitan Trail, where two trails from the north merged to make the final leg of the j ourney into St. Paul. The trail route that ran through Sherburne County was first used in 1844, after Norman Kittson established a trading post at Pembina. Once in Sherburne County, one trail hugged the western shore of Elk River "over the fine smooth prairie and through occasional strips of woodland." (as quoted in Gilman, 82) An older trail hugged the Mississippi River along the route of present County Road 8. The trails passed through modern Cable, Becker, Big Lake and Elk River. Once the St. Paul and Pacific Railway (later Great Northern) reached St. Cloud in 1867, the Red River carts began to stop at the closest railway terminal. After the Northern Pacific was completed to Moorhead in 1871, the carts stopped their annual migration. (See Edward Van Dyke Robinson, Early Economic Conditions and the Development History of Agriculture in Minnesota, 1915, 33-34) Sherburne County Historical Society Heritage Center Interpretive Plan, April 21, 2005, page 11