Two hundred years ago this month—April 1826—the Rocky Mountain fur trade was in its prime. Demand for felt hats in the eastern United States and Europe was strong, and American trapping brigades pushed ever deeper into the West. They competed fiercely not only with one anothe...
By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff Two hundred years after the height of the Rocky Mountain fur trade, beaver are still busy along the tributaries of the Snake, the Missouri, and the upper Green River and countless other streams that once held these fur bearing mammals. They go ...
By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff February often invites reflection on love and relationships, but courtship in the Rocky Mountain fur trade looked very different from the sentimental ideals of formal dances and letters familiar to many Americans in the early nineteenth century...
By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff In the early 19th-century fur trade, New Year’s often eclipsed Christmas as the primary festive occasion in remote areas. While Christmas was frequently quiet, or entirely unobserved, New Year’s tended to bring camaraderie, feasting, and li...
By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff Celebrating Christmas in the remote reaches of the Rocky Mountains required creativity, and sometimes a bit of improvisation. Fur trade journals offer glimpses into how trappers, traders, and their Native neighbors adapted familiar traditions t...
By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff Mountain men and fur traders in the Rocky Mountains did not celebrate Thanksgiving as we know it today. The national holiday was not established until 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed it during the Civil War, hoping “to heal th...
By Museum of the Mountain Man Staff Here a circumstance occurred which furnished the subject for a good joke upon our green Irish camp keeper. … It was the commencement of the rutting season with the elk, when the bucks frequently utter a loud cry resembling a shrill whistle, e...
By: Museum of the Mountain Man Staff There are few references to large, uncontrolled wildfires in the Rocky Mountains in fur trade journals. One notable exception is George Ruxton’s detailed account of a narrow escape from a wildfire near Pike’s Peak in the spring of 1847. Af...
When many think of the animals that would have graced the western landscape during the Rocky Mountain fur trade era (1820-1840), they may assume that the animals encountered by trappers and traders in Wyoming were pretty much the same as we have today. However not all iconic “w...
Many are familiar with the 1960’s novel Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell. For years children in Language Arts classes have read this book as part of the curriculum. The young main character of the book was actually based on the early 1800’s story of the &...
Q) Did the mountain men travel back and forth to the settlements on the supply route or an alternate route? A) By 1830, through exploration and information from Native people, the American businessmen and field leaders in the fur trade had a solid and fairly accurate picture of t...
Q) How did the mountain men know when and where to meet for rendezvous? A) In general, the fur company(s) agreed on the next year’s rendezvous site before the supply caravan returned east, however the question touches on how the business communication of the Rocky Mountain fur ...
Every year the Museum receives interesting questions that our fur trade historian’s do the research and help answer for us. Here is some research by AMM member Scott Walker. Q: Did the mountain men use money or trade coins? A: A mountain man lived in a financial world wh...
An interesting view of the Museum from a drone flying above. Courtesy of Rocky Mountain Power. ...
A couple weeks ago, a visitor came in and asked another intriguing question. She was curious if the Mountain Men ate the meat of the beaver they caught. A common phrase most mountain men specialists, when asked this, say “If it was meat they’d eat it.” True they...
For years a small 1826 journal was mistaken to be Robert Campbell’s diary. The journal was donated to the Campbell House Museum in St. Louis Missouri in an envelope marked “Campbell’s Diary” and it wasn’t until recently that an analysis of the handw...
