7.1. SR 07-29-2002 - Laserfiche WebLink

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Elk River Historic Context: Transportation, 1848-1950 From the time of its earliest permanent Euro-American settlement, Elk River has enjoyed a good location along well- traveled river and land routes. The transportation context extends from the construction of Pierre Bottineau's trading post to the completion of Highway 10 after World War II. The town sites of Orono and Elk River were adjacent to the Red River Trail, an oxcart route used by fur traders that followed the east bank of the Mississippi River between St. Paul and Sauk Rapids and then west along the Sauk River to the Canadian farming region at Pembina. It was in steady use by the time that the Minnesota Territory was organized in 1849.29 Travelers forded the Elk River near its mouth and followed the Mississippi to Sauk Rapids and north. By the mid-1850s, a 150- mile military road was constructed from Point Douglas near Hastings to Fort Ripley, on approximately the same route. Pierre Bottineau is credited with establishing a trading post at the mouth of the Elk River, in what became Orono, or Uppertown. There is no evidence today of the log building erected on Block 2, lots 5 and 6 of the Auditor's Addition to Elk River. (Some accounts credit David Faribault with establishing the post here in 1846, which he reportedly sold to Bottineau.)3° The presence of a trading post and the military road was attractive to those who made the first farm and mill claims in the area. Bottineau, ever on the move, remained long enough to build a hotel south of his trading post in Lowertown, or Elk River. Pierre Bottineau appears in many developing locales in the Minnesota Territory as a trader and speculator. Born in what is now Grand Forks, North Dakota in 1817, he was of French and Ojibwe ancestry. He worked as a guide for Henry Hastings Sibley and the American Fur Company, for army and geological expeditions throughout his career, and as a hunter, trapper, and land speculator and promoter of settlement. About the time he set up the trading post at Elk River he was an investor in the original plat of St. Anthony, and was working as a guide on explorations and hunts. 32 Following the routes of explorers and traders, those seeking good waterpower sites were attracted to the Falls of St. Anthony as well as other places where tributary rivers met the Mississippi. Steamboat and then rail transportation was essential to the distribution of their products. Steamboat traffic above the Fails of St. Anthony was initiated in 1850-51 with the Governor Ramsey, which made the hundred-mile trip between St. Anthony and Sauk Rapids in six hours. 32 Map of General Government Roads in the Territory of Minnesota, September 1854. A saw mill is shown on the Elk River. (MHS) Elk River Historic Contexts and Phase II Downtown Commercial Area Study 17