before 1898
The settling of Beltrami County came at the end of a transitional period in the development of Minnesota's transportation system. The earliest means of transport was by water. The first land that was taken up by traders, then the military, was considered valuable because it could be accessed by water. The next phase, as settlers began to arrive, was building roads from the towns and depots on the water to the interior. Crow Wing was an important town on the Mississippi. The government, to deal with the Native Americans, built a road from there to Mille Lacs and then from Mille Lacs to Leech Lake.
The next phase came as the railroads began building through the state. There was then less need for long trails; the need grew for shorter trails from railheads to the smaller, dispersed centers of population. These roads were valuable so long as the railhead stayed where it was, but of course the railroads were constantly expanding. As they expanded, the need for roads changed; as the rail network expanded, the need for and the location of distribution centers changed. Towns that had grown overnight could, metaphorically at least, die overnight. Crow Wing, one of the busier towns of the early days, collapsed after the Northern Pacific set up its shops in nearby Brainerd; now Crow Wing is a State Park, a poignant recollection of the past.
The railroads were themselves responding to changing conditions. As areas and towns developed and grew, as homesteaders moved in, as the Indian reservations were diminished, as logging came to depend upon railroads as well as rivers, and as the railroads became more profitable by carrying longer hauls, the network of rail lines spread all over the state, north and south, east and west.
Beltrami County
Beltrami County developed during the short window of time when there were railheads in other counties (Fosston in Polk County, Walker in Cass, and Park Rapids in Hubbard), but Beltrami itself was accessible only by rough wagon trails. Within a period of about ten years, beginning roughly in about 1893, Beltrami County went from a county with only two good wagon roads to a county in which most settlements were accessible either by rail or by short trips to the railhead.
Sometimes the trails were called roads, but that was almost too dignified a name. Except for the government-supported clearing of the Leech Lake and Red Lake Trails, they began as two wagon tracks. As more and more wagons passed over, the tracks became deeper and the soil about them loosened to slow down the wagon wheels.
Some tracks were several inches deep in sand. Others were loose soil. In wet weather the clay became slippery, and the heavy soil clung to the wheels and made slow going. Boggy spots were improved by corduroy, but in wet weather the corduroy could float or simply drift away. Bridges were sometimes built by the toters themselves, but spring freshets could wash them out without warning. To clear the trails, trees were cut even with the ground, but it did not take much use for the soil about the stumps to scrape off, leaving an obstacle that could turn a wagon over. If the trail got too bad, a by-pass would be cleared. Fortunately, if a driver got into trouble, on most trails he could depend upon another driver to come along and give him help.
A Corduroy Road
Courtesy the Leonard Dickinson Collection
The first constructed road in Beltrami County was the Leech Lake Trail. In 1863 the "Old Crossing Treaty" had authorized a road from the Chippewa Leech Lake Agency near the present town of Walker to the Red Lake Agency -- this was the Leech Lake Trail. This trail between the agencies was an important link for both the Native Americans and traders, but it became an important means of access to the county when the Brainerd and Northern Railroad built into Walker in 1894. By 1905, use of the trail fell off when the Red Lake Agency got its own rail connection; nonetheless, the Red Lake Band continued to use the trail for another ten or fifteen years.
By 1874, the government had built another road -- the Red Lake Trail -- connecting the Red Lake Agency with the White Earth Agency and the railhead at Detroit. Both these trails, though built to improve access to and from the Indian reservations, figured largely in the settlement and economy of Beltrami County during its early years of logging and settlement. In 1893 immigrants and private shippers could use the new steamboat connection with Thief River Falls; then in 1905, the Red Lake Agency got its own rail connection. The Red Lake Trail as thoroughfare became a memory.
The next main road found in use was the Fosston Trail. This trail began at the railhead in Fosston and ran eastwards. It joined the Red Lake Trail just before Howe's place (about four miles north of the present town of Bagley); then in a few miles it branched off to cross the Clearwater River, by way of the Bagley Dam (almost on the border of present Clearwater and Beltrami Counties) It then continued east until it branched south to Bemidji and northwest to Turtle Lake (later the site of Buena Vista). This trail had only occasional support from the county.
Two roads were authorized by the first Beltrami County Commissioners (appointed in 1894 before the county was officially organized). The first two roads they authorized and had built were the Black Duck County Road and the Fosston County Road. The Black Duck County Road, also known as the Lyons School Trail and the Langor Road, ran from the Leech Lake Trail at Turtle Lake or Buena Vista to the north end of Black Duck Lake.(The trail was named for the township. The village of Blackduck came later.) The Fosston County Road ran from Moose (now extinct), about four miles south of the present town of Shevlin about fifteen miles west of Bemidji near the present Clearwater - Beltrami County line, to Popple (now extinct), located at the point the present U.S.2 crosses the Polk County line. There it joined the trail from Fosston. At their first meeting the commissioners received and later rejected a petition to build a road from Moose directly to the Bemidji Post Office. This petition was rejected on the grounds that part of the road might be in Hubbard County. Later the commissioners gave some support to the trail that existed between Moose and Bemidji.
The busiest trail was the Park Rapids Trail. This trail, from Bemidji to the railhead in Park Rapids, originally started from the south side of the Mississippi where it flowed from Lake Irving to Lake Bemidji, site of the first buildings in the settlement. It crossed the Schoolcraft River south of Carr Lake, ran up the west side of the river, crossing it a second time before reaching Lake George. From Lake George it followed generally the present route of Hubbard County 4 into Park Rapids. This trail, begun in 1894, was supposedly maintained half by the merchants of Bemidji, half by the merchants of Park Rapids, though the newspapers constantly complained that the Hubbard County supporters did not do their part. Of all the trails, the Park Rapids Trail carried the heaviest traffic into Bemidji. It was the main route of supplies into the county and was crucial in making Bemidji the dominant distribution point, a position it never lost.
After the arrival of the Railroads
These were the main roads in 1894-95. Other roads developed; for example, a road was built from the Black Duck County Road to Gull Lake. Another was built from Steamboat Landing to the Park Rapids Trail to give Bemidji better access to the railhead at Walker and Leech Lake. These were minor trails. The Leech Lake Trail, the Red Lake Trail, the Fosston Trail, the Black Duck County Road, the Fosston County Road, and the Park Rapids Trail were the main roads when the Great Northern and the Brainerd and Northern built into Bemidji in 1898. After the railroads arrived, these trails were no longer needed, though the Leech Lake Trail continued until about World War I to provide a way for the Red Lake Band to travel from Red Lake to Cass Lake and the Leech Lake Agency.
The best discussion of the development of the Minnesota road system is Arthur Larsen, The Development of the Minnesota Road System. Minnesota Historical Society, St. Paul. © 1966.
Harold T. Hagg has a good summary chapter, "The Transportation Frontier," in The Mississippi Headwaters Region. Bemidji, MN : Beltrami Historical Society, 1986, 55-62.
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