When exploring the history of fur trading on the northern Great Plains, two names are prevalent: Antoine Blanc Gingras and John Warren Dease, Jr. This is John’s story.

The year was 1863. John Warren Dease, Jr. emigrated to the United States and settled as a merchant and fur-trader in the settlement of St. Joseph, which would later become known as Walhalla. Five years later, he moved his trading post and residence to this site, situated along the Pembina River bottom to the north of the young outpost of LeRoy, North Dakota. He continued trading and farming surrounded by the peaceful remoteness and quiet solitude of the land.

At the time, LeRoy and nearby Neche, were local commercial trade centers with one very clear difference, Neche had a railroad and LeRoy did not. The lack of the iron horse required Dease and other pioneers to rely on ox carts to transfer their goods. On the ox cart trails, early settlers and influential visiting dignitaries would travel to the post, which served as a meeting place and would come to be known as the “Rendezvous of Pioneers”. These meetings would ultimately be influential in shaping politics, commerce, and transportation across the region.

The log cabins themselves were built using Red River construction, methods and techniques of Metis builders who adapted eastern Canada log cabin designs in a manner that is very specialized and unique to the Red River region of Canada and the United States.

Surrounded by native trees like oak, cottonwood, American elm, and basswood, John Warren Dease, Jr’s., trading post takes us back in time, to the late fur trade era. The driveway which sees almost exclusively automobiles was once the historic Red River Cart trail, where the sounds of car horns, radios, and engines were replaced with the rickety turns of a cart wheel and the low of an ox. Explore the story by walking along the trail ruts and imagining the sights, smells, and sounds you would have heard over a century ago.

Around 1900, the property came into the hands of the French and Metis Martineau family who preserved the property for the majority of the 20th century. Its historical significance and integrity was honored in 2017 when it was listed on the National Register for Historic Places.