Green River Rendezvous: Mountain Men's Annual Fair
Wyoming
Between eighteen twenty-five and eighteen forty, the Upper Green River valley in what is now Sublette County, Wyoming, hosted several of the annual Rocky Mountain Rendezvous, the fur-trade gatherings that were equal parts trade fair, festival, and cross-cultural congress. Each summer, mountain men, Native traders from a dozen nations, and representatives of the St. Louis fur companies converged here to exchange beaver pelts for manufactured goods, ammunition, and whiskey.
The Rendezvous was the economic engine of the beaver fur trade and the primary mechanism by which American knowledge of the central Rockies accumulated before settlement. Artists Alfred Jacob Miller attended the eighteen thirty-seven Rendezvous and painted the only contemporary images of the event. The fur trade collapsed in the early eighteen forties when European fashion moved away from beaver hats.
The site is a National Historic Landmark and hosts a living-history reenactment each summer.
