Pinedale, Wyoming

Pinedale sits in the upper Green River Valley at the foot of the Wind River Range, but its deepest identity is tied to a piece of ground eight miles to the west. Six of the sixteen Rocky Mountain Rendezvous held between eighteen twenty-five and eighteen forty took place near here at a site called Horse Creek on the Green River. Mountain men, traders, and Native American groups gathered each summer to sell furs, resupply for the coming year, swap stories, and compete in shooting, racing, and wrestling.

Figures like Jim Bridger, Kit Carson, and Thomas Fitzpatrick marked their careers at these gatherings. The Rendezvous were the engine of the Rocky Mountain fur trade, the commerce that pulled European American attention deep into the Rocky Mountains before the beaver market collapsed in the early eighteen forties. The Museum of the Mountain Man in Pinedale preserves that history, and the town has reenacted the Rendezvous every summer since nineteen thirty-six.