The Traverse Gap was used by Native Americans, who "from time immemorial . . . had place two weather-beaten buffalo skulls where travelers paused to smoke a pipe at the divide." Its significance was also appreciated by early explorers, including Major Stephen Harriman Long, who led an expedition up the Minnesota River (then called St. Peter River) across the gap and down the Red River:. . . we continued our journey in what appeared to have been an old water-course, and, within three miles of the Big Stone Lake, found ourselves on the bank of Lake Travers ... . The space between Lakes Travers and Big Stone, is but very-little elevated above the level of both these lakes; and the water has been known, in times of flood, to rise and cover the intermediate ground, so as to unite the two lakes. In fact, both these bodies of water are in the same valley; and it is within the recollection of some persons, now in the country, that a boat once floated from Lake Travers into the St. Peter. Thus, therefore, this spot offers us one of those interesting phenomena, which we have already alluded to, but which are no where perhaps so apparent as they are in this place. Here we behold the waters of two mighty streams, one of which empties itself into Hudson's Bay at the 57th parallel of north latitude, and the other into the Gulf of Mexico, in latitude 29°, rising in the same valley within three miles of each other, and even in some cases offering a direct natural navigation from one into the other.