History :
Pine River...was originally established as a logging and fur trading community. Native American people canoed the lakes and streams of the area and famous explorers lied the present day stream named Norway Brook and the Pine River, which both flow through our community and the nearby townships.

George Barclay was the founder of the City of Pine River and the main street through the city, Barclay Avenue, is named after him. Mr. Barclay operated Barclay's Trading Post alongside what is now Highway 371. His business supplied a large area with the foods needed to exist in the north woods. Mr. Barclay was shot and killed in a now non-existent hotel in Pine River in the late 1800s and the murderer was never apprehended. It is a piece of Pine River history that many do not know.

Pine River owes much of it's history to the pine, particularly the white pine. The pine forests stretching across the state from the shores of the "big sea water" to the plains of the "American Desert" contained thousands of square miles of the finest timber east of the Pacific Northwest.

Found near the center of this mammoth forest preserve, located in the giant forest-fertile crescent formed by the headwaters of the Mississippi River and flowing through many termed "the richest stand of timber in the Old Northwest," is a river memorialized by early explorers as "The Pine".

And at the place where it's two major tributaries, the South Fork and Norway Brook, merge to form this majestic stream a peppery Scotsman founded a trading post in 1873, then a ranch followed by a hotel. Later cam a railroad, then a town - and finally a prosperous city.

Within two years after the Northern Pacific Railway had bridged the Mississippi River at "The Crossing" (Now Brainerd), George Angus Barclay established the first permanent trading post on the Pine River. From this site grew the village, which eventually took the name of the river and became "Pine River".