During the period from 1800 to 1860 fur trading was the principal commercial venture in what is now North Dakota. Trading Posts were established at various points by the Hudson Bay Company and the Northwest Fur Company, notably at St. Joseph (Walhalla) and Pembina.
With the settlement of the location of the boundary between Canada and the United States, these companies were forced to leave the area. The American Fur Company then made plans to step into the void left by their departure, although the fur bearing population and in particular the buffalo had declined.
It was decided that a fur trading post should be established in the Sheyenne River Valley and the man selected for the post factor was Major Joseph R. Brown.
Major Brown, soldier, fur trader and Indian expert was well known in Minnesota and Wisconsin. He was furnished with a supply of trade goods and instructed to establish a trading post near or on the mouth of "Butte Pelee," now known as Baldhill Creek.
No records have been found which indicate how Major Brown transported his trade goods to the Sheyenne River Valley but one must assume that he walked the entire distance from Fort Snelling carrying his trade goods on his back, along with food for a long stay.
Major Brown arrived at Baldhill Creek in the fall of 1842 and built a small trading post on the west side of Baldhill Creek, some four miles east of what is now Dazey, North Dakota. Nothing remains of the building and the exact location is unknown. Likely it consisted of a dugout in the side of the valley.
Here Major Brown carried on the fur trading business with the Cut Head tribe of the Yanktonnais Sioux. The Indian name for the location was "Pa-ha-shdashda".
Major Brown, a resident of the new state of Wisconsin, had filed for election to the Wisconsin legislature before taking off for Baldhill Creek. He was duly elected in the election that fall without campaigning and it became necessary for some one to go to Baldhill Creek to so inform him of his election. It is not known who the individual was, but he must have been one of the half-breed French-Indians known as "Metis" who knew the area in which Brown had his trading post. It is also not known when he arrived at the post but it likely was shortly after Christmas of 1842.
Learning of his election, Major Brown immediately closed the trading post, bundled up the furs he had acquired and started for Prairie du Chinen Wisconsin. Due to the very deep snow covering the northwest, Major Brown and his messenger were forced to snow shoe the entire distance to Prairie du Chien.
The Baldhill Trading Post was never reopened. Time and the weather have obliterated its location, although several attempts have been made to find it. It is likely that the location is now covered with the waters of Lake Ashtabula.
Source: Barnes County History 1976 Page 317