Back to INDEX

Explorers and Voyageurs

Fur Trappers and Traders

Mountain Men and Hunters

Two official approaches to the limits of the known world of the time almost reached Wyoming around the turn of the nineteenth century. The first was the little known exploration of Fray *** de Escalante, sent in 1776 by the viceroy of New Spain to find an overland route between Santa Fe and Monterey in California. The other was the more celebrated Lewis and Clark expedition, sent by President Thomas Jefferson of the United States in *** to find an overland route to the Pacific Ocean.

Fray Pedro*** de Escalante, 0. F. M., went north from Santa Fe in 1776, “discovered” the Green river, which he named Rio San Buenaventura because they discovered it on St. Bonaventure’s feastday, July 14, 1777. Escalante came closest to Wyoming in 1777 when he turned west, discouraged from proceeding further up the Green river by the lateness of the season and the frightening sheerness of the escarpment and narrow gates of Lodore. Besides inquiring among the Indian nations encountered if there were any who wished to be baptized, Escalante was looking for a land route to California. Only in 1699 had the Jesuit Father Kino proved that California was not an island, as had been thought, by discovering the outlet of the Colorado River. Fray de Escalante, turned back from Lodore, proceeded to Lake Utah (Timpanogos), followed the fresh-water river, which the Mormons call the Jordan river, to the dead sea of the Great Salt Lake. Escalante contemplated the desert, and concluded that a land route to California was impossible because of desert and canyons. So they returned to Santa Fe, spending about a month crossing the Grand Canyon, and California continued to be ruled by sea. Escalante’s was the last attempt of the three century old effort of the Spanish viceroys to expand towards the north, for after 1789 revolution and war engulfed the world and toppled the old regime forever.

The Meriwether Lewis and William Clark expedition, 1804-1806, went up the Missouri river to its source, then crossed to the Snake which they followed down to the Columbia, thence down to the Ocean. President Jefferson was happy to add this exploration to the claims arguing for annexation of the Oregon country to the United States. Lewis and Clark just missed the northwest corner of Wyoming on their trip. But one of the Lewis and Clark expedition, John Colter, did come back and got into some real or legendary trouble around 1807 when he discovered “Colter's Hell” in the Yellowstone Park district. Although the name “Colter's Hell” has been applied to the whole park and sometimes attributed to the thermodynamics of the place, Father Michael Shine suggested that it was a very particular place, a kind of a tar spring near the mouth [sic, did he mean source?] of the Stinking Water river. The great showman and founder of Cody, Wyoming, later renamed the “Stinking Water” river, the “Shoshoni” river,” so as not to scare off tourists because of the name.

The sons of Pierre Gauthier Varennes, Sieur de la Vérendrye, were the first Europeans certainly known to have entered the present state of Wyoming. On their expedition to the Rocky Mountains from Fort La Reine (Portage la Prairie, Manitoba) in 1742-1743, the voyageurs were at the foot of the Big Horn mountains and near the Tongue river in January, 1743. Perhaps other wandering Europeans came and went in this mountain country before the nineteenth century, but any did, they left no trace or never returned to tell a tale.

Furs brought adventurers into Wyoming. The American Fur Company, founded by John Jacob Astor to compete with Hudson's Bay Company in the newly claimed region of Oregon, sent to found a post near the mouth of the Columbia river, in 1811-1812, Hunt's “Astoria Party” of sixty men, of whom forty were French Canadians. They passed through Wyoming to get to Astoria. The Hudson's Bay Company is perhaps the oldest joint stock company in existence, having been founded in 1688, and still in operation. American competition appeared in the formation of the Missouri Fur Company, the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, and the American Fur Company, who sent innumerable expeditions and trading caravans to Fort Laramie and to the Green River Rendezvous. Since the fur bearing animals were unfit to trap from the middle of June to the middle of September the trappers went to the Rendezvous for trade and supplies and fun. As long as the fashion for beaver hats and fur coats reigned supreme in Europe the trade flourished. After 1823, when the Rendezvous system became established, among the famous trappers and traders in Wyoming were Thomas Fitzpatrick (from 1823 to 1852) and Stephen Provost, a Frenchman, along with Jacques LaRamie, Glen Ashley, Jim Bridger, the Sublette brothers, Andrew Drips, Henry Vanderburgh, Lucien Fontanelle, Robert Campbell, and a host of other noted characters who have left their names on the map here and there.

The era of the fashionable hunting trip to Wyoming began in 1833, when Captain Sir William Drummond Stewart, a baronet from Perthshire, Scotland, accompanied by Dr. Benjamin Harrison (also later President?***), son of the American General William Henry Harrison (***later elected President in 1840, “Tippicanoe and Tyler too!” and then died in 1841 after a month in office) were on a hunting trip in Wyoming. The visit by railroad*** of President Chester Alan Arthur to Yellowstone National Park in *** further encouraged the rich of the East and of Europe to make the grand western tour. Later in the century Buffalo Bill Cody was able to arrange hunting parties in the grand style for a number of notables, including Prince Albert*** of Monaco (***) and the young Grand Duke Alexis Alexandrovich of Russia, son of Tsar Alexander II*** (***). Theodore Roosevelt was another avid visitor of Wyoming, although he later settled on the Little Missouri as his particular favorite.

Fort Laramie, its name derived from the name of the trader, Jacques LaRamie, was built as a trading post around 1834-1835. Fort Laramie was the first permanent white settlement in the present state, and later became a military post and an important station on the Oregon Trail. Migration along the Oregon Trail continued from ***1849 until the completion of the Union Pacific railroad in 1869. It is estimated that during these years *** people passed through Wyoming on their way to Oregon, Utah, or California. Notable passages were the early trip of Dr. and Eliza Whitman, ***, the unfortunate Donner party in 18***, the Mormons in ***1846-1847, and the raucous “Forty-niners,” the California gold hunters of 1849.