Starting in the 1600s, furs and hides were traded among American Indians, Canadians, Spaniards, and English, French and Russian traders. Follow the history of the fur trade in Colorado from 1600 to 1850!

Beginning with the founding of Quebec, Canada, American Indian tribes throughout North America collect furs and hides, and exchange them for manufactured goods supplied by Spanish, English, French, and Russian traders.

American Indian Trading

Battle between trappers and Arikara Indians halts trade along the Missouri River, inspires overland travel to the West and seasonal trade camps called “rendezvous,” where groups of mountain men, American Indians, and traders come together to exchange goods.

Rendezvous

Returning from their journey to the Pacific Ocean, explorers Lewis and Clark meet trappers heading west. American fur trade era in the Rocky Mountain West begins.

Lewid and Clark

William Ashley advertises for “enterprising young men” to join his fur trapping company.


William Ashley

First large group of fur trappers comes to the upper Arkansas River in what is present-day Colorado.

Fur Trappers

Comanche warriors resist American expansion into their trading empire by killing legendary mountain man Jedediah Smith on the Cimarron Cutoff of the Santa Fe Trail.


Comanche Warriors

Fort Lupton established on the South Platte, near the present-day town of Fort Lupton, by Lancaster P. Lupton.

Fort Lupton

Fort St. Vrain established on the South Platte by William Bent and Ceran St. Vrain, just Northwest of present-day Platteville.

Fort St. Vrain

El Pueblo established on the Arkansas River (present-day Pueblo). Mountain men Jim Bridger and Louis Vasquez establish Fort Bridger on the Oregon-California-Utah Trail in Southwestern Wyoming. As trading forts such as Fort Bridger and El Pueblo increasingly supplied emigrant wagon trains and traded for buffalo robes with Plains Indian hunters, the Rocky Mountain fur trade era faded away.


El Pueblo

Smith, Jackson, and Sublette sell Rocky Mountain Fur Company to Thomas Fitzpatrick, Jim Bridger, Milton Sublette, Henry Fraeb, and Jean Baptiste Gervais. Williams Sublette takes first supply wagons to the mountains, blazing a trail across the continental Divide later used by thousands of emigrants to Oregon and California.


A New Trail

Overtrapping and shifting fashion tasted from beaver fur hats to silk mark the quick collapse of the Rocky Mountain fur trade.

The Collapse

Rocky Mountain Fur Company’s first rendezvous.

Rocky Mountain Fur Company

Bent’s Fort constructed along the Arkansas River in Southeast Colorado near a popular American Indian trading center known as the Big Timbers.

Bent's Fort

Fort Vasquez established on the South Platte River, near the present-day town of Platteville, by Andrew Sublette and Louis Vasquez.

Standards for Fur Trade in Colorado Timeline

College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework