| Summary: | A Brief Overview of Transportation in North Dakota Horse and Travois Evidence of human occupation in what is now the state of North Dakota dates back roughly 15,000 years. Archeologists believe prehistoric peoples migrated from Asia to the Americas across the Bering Land Bridge. The successors of these peoples, the American Indians, traveled and traded with each other on foot and, eventually, horseback for thousands of years. A horse (or a dog) sometimes pulled a travois, which was a platform, sling, or netting supported by two long trailing poles, the forward ends of which were fastened to a pack animal. First Non-Indian Exploration Party Spanish, French, British, and American explorers used overland and water routes to discover what lay in the Northern Plains. The earliest recorded entrance to North Dakota by an exploration party was made from the north. Pierre Gaultier de Varennes, Sieur de La Verendrye, a Montreal merchant and explorer, visited the area in 1738 in a disappointing effort to find a water route to the Pacific Ocean. Red River Ox Carts The first regular overland routes in the state branched out from Pembina in the northern Red River Valley, best known as the home base for the Metis people. The Metis were descended from Scottish, French, and English trappers and traders who married Indian wives in the Canadian wilderness. The unique Metis culture was reflected in their inventive method of transportation: the Red River ox carts. These carts were made entirely of native wood. The wheels were one solid piece, sawed off the end of trees, about three feet in diameter, and un-greased so that they squeaked loudly on their wooden axles. At first the Metis traded in furs; then their livelihood shifted to buffalo. Hides and pemmican (dried buffalo meat mixed with bone grease) were carted all the way to St. Paul, Minnesota. Over the decades, hundreds, sometimes thousands of carts a year traveled the 500 miles between Pembina and St. Paul leaving deep ruts in the prairie. Steamboats Rivers were the highways to the Northern Great Plains in the mid-1800s. The Missouri and Red Rivers were the great links with the settled and established world east and south of North Dakota. The successful run of the Anson Northrup from Fort Abercrombie (near Wahpeton) to Fort Garry (near Winnipeg) in 1859 began the era of boat transportation on the Red River. Over the next decade, the Red River ox carts could not compete with boats, a much quicker form of transportation. Steamboating on the upper Missouri began in 1832 when the American Fur Company's boat, the Yellowstone reached Fort Union (near Williston). By 1860, 567 Chapter 12 Transportation
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