The Ox Cart Trade

By the 1840's, after the establishment of the 49th Parallel as the border between Canada and the U.S. and after the English and French had retreated above that, the principal means of getting the furs to market was first by ox cart.

Look at the size of those wheels!

The very first such cart used in the Red River fur trade was built in 1800 by Henry Alexander who was living in Pembina.  The trail they followed from Pembina to St. Paul, Minnesota was known as the Old Pembina Trail and covered a distance of 471 miles.  By 1869, 2,500 carts rattled and squeeled their way down the Trail loaded with furs and then back up with trade goods for Indians and settlers.

Looks like an 18-wheeler caravan of today's Interstate highways, huh?

A few years earlier the first steamboat came up the Red River of the North, and by 1878 the first railroad was completed as far up as St. Vincent, Minnesota.  Obviously, these methods of transportation replaced the ox cart almost completely.