By Carol KuhnOctober 22, 2026 In the fall of 1824, Hudson’s Bay Company’s Alexander Ross reported the sickening of his trappers along a river that Ross subsequently named “Riviere Aux Malades.”[1] In his own words, On reaching that stream we found beaver in considerab...
By Tim TannerSeptember 29, 2026 What would an artist carry into the Rocky Mountains if the nearest art store was not across town, but somewhere back east beyond weeks—or months—of travel? It is easy for modern artists to imagine a supply problem in terms of inconvenience: a m...
By Scott WalkerAugust 28, 2026 During the journey to the original Bear Lake Rendezvous of 1827 and back, William H. Ashley, fur trader, politician, and militia general, achieved a first. He took a wheeled vehicle through South Pass, proving Robert Stuart’s 1813 assessment corre...
How Art from Our Mountains Changed America Part Three By Sue SommersAugust 11, 2026 There is no doubt that Bierstadt changed the way we view our land, and through our land, ourselves. Paul Richard, “Paean to the American Dream: At the National Gallery, Albert Bierstadt’s Beat...
By Rick WilliamsJuly 24, 2026 The 1826 Rocky Mountain Rendezvous marked a turning point in the western fur trade. During this gathering, William H. Ashley began withdrawing from the mountain trade, the partnership of Smith, Jackson & Sublette emerged, and the organizational s...
How Art from Our Mountains Changed America Part Two By Sue SommersJuly 20, 2026 How Art from Our Mountains Changed AmericaPart One | Part Two | Part Three As an artist myself, and someone who has photographed, sketched and painted the Wind River Mountains, I think I understand...
How Art from Our Mountains Changed America Part One By Sue SommersJune 18, 2026 How Art from Our Mountains Changed AmericaPart One | Part Two | Part Three If you’ve spent much time in the northern Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, you might have visited Island Lake. The area is ...
By Vic Nathan BarkinJune 12, 2026 On April 24, 1831, a company of seventy men under John Gantt and Jefferson Blackwell left St. Louis on a trapping and trading venture bound for the Rocky Mountains. Twenty-two year-old Zenas Leonard was hired on as a clerk, trapper and trader, an...
By Museum of the Mountain Man StaffApril 23, 2026 Each May, just as the Museum of the Mountain Man opens for a new season, Living History Days—one of our most hectic and rewarding events—arrives along with more than 1,000 students from across southwestern Wyoming. For three m...
By Museum of the Mountain Man StaffMarch 31, 2026 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 Wes...
By Museum of the Mountain Man StaffFebruary 25, 2026 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 ...
By Museum of the Mountain Man StaffJanuary 26, 2026 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 ni...
By Museum of the Mountain Man StaffJanuary 6, 2026 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, f...
By Museum of the Mountain Man StaffDecember 2, 2025 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 famil...
By Museum of the Mountain Man StaffOctober 31, 2025 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, hopi...
By Museum of the Mountain Man StaffOctober 16, 2025 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 s...
By Museum of the Mountain Man StaffSeptember 17, 2025 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 s...
