The settlement from which present-day St. Paul began was originally established at modern Lambert's Landing. Fort Snelling (or Fort Saint Anthony) was founded here in 1819 in order to develop American fur-trading industry. When the whiskey trade began to proliferate, the distillers were banned in Fort Snelling by the officials. There was one French-Canadian fur trader to turn bootlegger, Pierre "Pig's Eye" Parrant. He set up his tavern, the Pig's Eye. By the early 1840s, the community had become important as a trading center and a destination for settlers heading west. Locals called the area Pig's Eye or Pig's Eye Landing after Parrant's popular tavern.

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