The first white men to explore this general area of Minnesota were probably the French fur traders
Radisson and Groseilliers who are thought to have penetrated as far as Knife Lake in 1660. 

Mission Creek Township, located in the west central part of Pine County, was organized on March 17, 1880,  
and named for the creek running through the township that ended at the Presbyterian Mission and school for the Ojibway 
on the East side of Pokegama Lake. The Mission and School were established in 1836 and presided over by 
Presbyterian Minister Fred Ayer and his wife. Mrs. Ayer was the first woman school teacher in Minnesota 
and the first white woman in what is now Pine County.

As the Ojibway indians were pushed out of the East, they in turn pushed the Dakota Sioux back toward the Mississippi
country. In Eastern Minnesota, the two tribes battled for about 200 years.
On May 24th, 1841 Dakota Indians attacked the Ojibway settlement at the Mission on Pokegama Lake to
"avenge the wrongs of the Ojibway". Two 15 yr old Mission school pupils and one Christian Indian were killed. 
Three others were severely wounded. This attack scared the Ojibway and caused them to avoid the Mission,
and it soon was abandoned.
Mission Creek Village, located in section 10, was known as a sawmill town in the early days. Established on the 
Lake Superior and Mississippi Railroad, Mission Creek Village grew around the depot and sawmill.
The sawmill at Mission Creek Village was quite a large affair for those days, as it employed about 100 men and had a 
capacity of 75,000 board feet per day. There were no horses, all the logging operations being done by oxen.
Eighty to one hundred oxen were used during the height of operations in the camps. Some of the best ox teamsters 
in the county were employed here. (Oxen worked better in wet, boggy areas)
Four to six oxen were used to haul an average load of 15 to 16 thousand board feet. 
It was estimated that a foot of green pine in the log would weigh eighty pounds.
An average load consisting of 15,000 feet would therefore weigh 120,000 pounds, more than equal the 
capacity of a large freight car of today.


In 1890, Minnesota ranked first in the country in lumber production and by 1893 most all the big pines were gone 
from the Mission Creek area.  An area farmer claimed that it was difficult to walk around the pine stumps, 
and that he counted an average of four hundred per acre

The Eastern Minnesota train, made up by coupling two trains then in Hinckley back to Superior, WI. 
The train began moving about 4:00 to 4:05 p.m. On its way to Superior, the train crossed nineteen burning bridges 
over the first 14 miles north of Hinckley. The train brakemen examine each bridge for safety before the train passed 
over. The Kettle River bridge was on fire as the train approached. The bridge watchman estimated the train had five
minutes to cross before the bridge fell. The northeast portion of the 1600-foot long, 115-foot high bridge fell shortly 
after the train crossed. Before the train traveled another 2000 feet the entire structure collapsed.

(the above from James Root - http://rhet5662.class.umn.edu/heroes/root.html)
The seventy mile trip to West Superior took seven hours.
 This train saved 476 to 478 people.