Georgetown: Transportation Crossroads

For nearly a decade and a half the tiny Clay County settlement of Georgetown was an important fur trade transportation crossroads. The British owned, Ft. Garry (Winnipeg) based Hudson’s Bay Company (HBC) established Georgetown in 1859. Steamboats hauled the HBC’s furs from Ft. Garry south to Georgetown. There the furs were transferred to Red River carts for the overland trip to St. Paul. Railroads then carried the furs to the east coast and sail boats took them to London. The HBC’s trade goods followed a reverse route to St. Paul then via carts to Georgetown and the steamboats north to Ft. Garry.

Independent traders in competition with the HBC also used the carts and steamboats to stock their stores on the border with Canada. By the late 1860s trains of hundreds of ox-drawn Red River carts creaked across the prairies to the steamboats at Georgetown each year. The Minnesota State Company also used Georgetown as a terminal for their stagecoach passengers traveling between St. Paul and Ft. Garry.

In 1871 the Northern Pacific Railway reached the Red River at Moorhead and replaced the Red River carts. Georgetown soon disappeared.

In 1883 the Great Northern Railway built a branch line north from Moorhead and created a new town, also called Georgetown, on the railroad line a mile southwest of the old settlement.