Forts Folle Avoine Historical Park is a living history site on 80 wooded acres along the Yellow River with authentic 1802 fur trade posts & Indian Village.
The fur trade posts were reconstructed at the actual site known to be active from 1802 to 1805. Adjacent to the Forts is a re-created Woodland Indian Village.
The park, a National Register of Historic Places site, is operated by the Burnett County Historical Society with support from its membership and Burnett County. Visitors come from across Minnesota and Wisconsin and as far away as Scotland, Bulgaria, France, United Kingdom, Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Japan; guest book comments consistently offer superlatives: "fantastic," "tremendous," "amazingly well presented!"
These Yellow River trading posts were abandoned and forgotten, then re-discovered in 1969 by Harris and Francis Palmer and Gene and Lafayette Connor. Through the extant journal of George Nelson, an XY Company clerk, researchers were able to locate the site and begin excavating.
The Folle Avoine site is unique for several reasons: the exact place of the wintering posts was found, the posts had been undisturbed for over 200 years allowing archeologists a pure site to investigate, and two competing companies were at the same location. Charred remains provided evidence and enabled reconstruction of the wintering posts exactly as they were over two hundred years ago!
