John Jacob Astor's dream of empire took shape as the American Fur Company. At Astor's retirement in 1834, this corporate monopoly reached westward from a depot

The legendary mountain men—the fur traders and trappers who penetrated the Rocky Mountains and explored the Far West in the first half on the nineteenth centu

?Frenchmen were far ahead of Englishmen in the early Far West, not only prior in time but greater in numbers and in historical importance,? writes Janet Lecompt

In the early 1800s vast fortunes were made in the international fur trade, an enterprise founded upon the effort of a few hundred trappers scattered across the