Talk:Red River Trails

Red River Trails is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.

This article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on March 30, 2009.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
November 4, 2008	Featured article candidate	Promoted

A fact from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "Did you know?" column on May 4, 2007.

The text of the entry was: Did you know ...that for fifty years the Red River Trails were used by Red River ox carts as the principal means of transportation between modern-day Winnipeg, Manitoba and St Paul, Minnesota?

Canada: Manitoba / Geography Low‑importance

	Canada portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Canada, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Canada on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.CanadaWikipedia:WikiProject CanadaTemplate:WikiProject CanadaCanada-related
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Manitoba.
	This article is supported by WikiProject Geography of Canada.

Minnesota Mid‑importance

	Minnesota portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Minnesota, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of articles related to Minnesota on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MinnesotaWikipedia:WikiProject MinnesotaTemplate:WikiProject MinnesotaMinnesota
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

United States: North Dakota Mid‑importance

	United States portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject United States, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of topics relating to the United States of America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the ongoing discussions. Template Usage Articles Requested! Become a Member Project Talk Alerts United StatesWikipedia:WikiProject United StatesTemplate:WikiProject United StatesUnited States
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.
	North Dakota portal This article is supported by WikiProject North Dakota (assessed as Mid-importance).

South Dakota Low‑importance

	South Dakota portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject South Dakota, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of the U.S. state of South Dakota on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.South DakotaWikipedia:WikiProject South DakotaTemplate:WikiProject South DakotaSouth Dakota
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

National Register of Historic Places Low‑importance

	National Register of Historic Places portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject National Register of Historic Places, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of U.S. historic sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.National Register of Historic PlacesWikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic PlacesTemplate:WikiProject National Register of Historic PlacesNational Register of Historic Places
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

A note on sources

While an effort has been made to include a variety of sources, the definitive history of the trails is the publication of the Minnesota Historical Society by Rhoda Gilman et al. entitled Red River Trails, which is cited over two dozen times. (Google Books reproduces parts of this work.) And at least one of the other sources which postdate that work relies on it. (The Hess NHRP form, listed in the references, clearly relies on Gilman's book.) Although not lengthy, the Gilman book is richly sourced, and is based on extensive research into old records, including orginal surveys, railroad plats, and letters from pioneer users of the trails. It "occupies the field" as a comprehensive history of the trails, and to suppress some of the citations to it, in favor of derivative or less scholarly works, would be a disservice to a reader who wants to research further. Kablammo (talk) 01:35, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Varieties of English

The article was originally written in American English, but was changed to Canadian English spellings. While the Red River Trails were of regional importance in the United States, they may be said to have been of national importance in Canada, for the reasons discussed in the article. Kablammo (talk) 01:35, 24 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Song

Excellent article, very well written and comprehensive. Even though I'm a native of L'Étoile du Nord, I knew little about the Red River Trails.

One question: Wouldn't it be appropriate to mention the Red River Valley (song)?

Sca (talk) 16:02, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

If a good source links the song to the trails and you can work that into the article, please do so. Jonathunder (talk) 19:56, 30 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was never aware of the possible connection with Red River "of the North". (Mitch Miller never mentioned that!) I do not see any specific connection to use of the trails. The song may be associated with the Wolseley Expedition, which as a military expedition was unable to cross US territory, so it used the Dawson Road rather than the Red River trails.[1] Perhaps mention of the song should go on the Red River Valley page. Kablammo (talk) 14:59, 31 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Trish Lewis 21:49, 12 January 2010 (UTC) - This is what I have discovered in my own research on the song: As was shown by the research of Canadian folklorist Edith Fowke, the song originated among British troops who came to Manitoba, the Red River Valley of the North, to put down the Metis rebellion of the late 1860s. Like "Fraulein" and all the other soldier's-sweetheart songs that were popular country standards in Cold-War America and on Armed Forces Radio, "Red River Valley" is a song of military occupation. - From the The Great Plains Songbook[reply]

Lubrication

What would a teflon axle collar or some powdered graphite have fetched, had they existed then ? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.218.201.141 (talk • contribs) 19:26, March 30, 2009

MW2010

When I was at the Museums and the Web 2010 conference last week, I met someone from the Minnesota Historical Society and I was happy to be able to tout Wikipedia using this article - he was impressed by it. Hopefully we'll be able to recruit people from their Society to write articles, contribute references, etc. :) Awadewit (talk) 19:07, 20 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for this pleasant note! The Historical Society is older than the state, and had amongst its founders some of the territory's influential pioneers. There is at least one employee of the MHS in Wikipedia, and it would be great to cooperate with others at the society to develop further articles. Kablammo (talk) 20:11, 22 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Possible additional sources

Compendium of History and Biography of Central and Northern Minnesota, G.A. Ogle & Co., Chicago 1904

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Red River Trails. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20080220000512/http://www.info.co.clay.mn.us/history/cart_squeak.htm to http://www.info.co.clay.mn.us/History/cart_squeak.htm

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 10:28, 30 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

The archive link has the text, but not the sound which was the purpose of the cite. I will look for a substitute. Kablammo (talk) 22:15, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

urls checked and updated where needed. Kablammo (talk) 16:50, 29 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified (February 2018)

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 3 external links on Red River Trails. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 21:06, 10 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

urls checked and updated where needed. Kablammo (talk) 16:50, 29 August 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Merge with Pembina Trail article?

I would like to suggest the merging of the Pembina Trail article into this one, under it's own subheading. I think it would be more beneficial to have the history and descriptions of the major trails in one place to create cohesiveness and avoid repetition. As well, the Pembina Trail article on it's own is very short. S.cacciotti (talk) 05:00, 29 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'm sort of neutral on the idea; I don't know the topics well enough to have a stronger opinion. I think that the big question is whether or not Pembina should stay as a sub-article of this one. A few notes: if a merge is decided, it would take some work to nicely merge it in, since it already has some coverage in this article. I'd be happy to work on that. Sincerely, North8000

This is a Featured Article, and any additions to it should not endanger that status. I oppose a merger, at least until we see what is intended to be merged. It may well be that a fully-developed article one on part of the trails is too much detail for this overview, and should be separate. Kablammo (talk) 15:48, 30 November 2019 (UTC)[reply]

"Pembina Trail" also has been used to refer to the Red River Trail in what is now Minnesota. Gunderson, Dan, "Reliving 150-year-old history a step, and a creak, at a time". MPR News, June 7, 2022. Kablammo (talk) 05:51, 8 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]