Pinedale is located on the western side of the Wind River Mountains and is approximately 60 miles northwest of what today is called South Pass. The discovery of South Pass with its broad and gently sloping slopes and its relatively low altitude (7,000 ft. / 2450 m.) was very important in the expansion of the United States west of the Rocky Mountains.

Eventually, South Pass funnelled approximately 95% of those early settlers along the Oregon Trail, California Trail and the Mormon Trail. The Pony Express as well as the first transcontinental telegraph also came through South Pass and the transcontinental railroad was close by.

Before the arival of the mountain men, the area was inhabatited by the Shoshone Indians. The area was also visited by the Snake Indians from the northwest and the Ute Indians from the south.

The Native Americans occupied the land for an estimated 10,000 years before the arrival of American white man. With the arrival of the mountain men, the Indians of the area welcomed the mountain man and the mountain man took on many of the ways of the Indian.

Note: The images are from the pageant presented by the Sublette County Historical Society and the Museum of the Mountain Man. While the pageant depicts the entire history, these selected images are meant to give a 'flavor' of the history of this era.

The early trailblazers were fur traders and trappers. In October of 1811, 61 'Astorians' of the American Fur Company and the squaw of Pierre Dorion with her two children with 118 horses passed through the area. These people worked for John Astor, a man who became extremely wealthy in the fur trade. At one time, Astor loaned the young United States money.

The Astorians were led by the legendary threesome of John Hoback, Jacob Reznor and Edward Robinson. Here, they are seen in the pageant charting out a new course in the new lands with the help of one of the Antelope Soldiers of the Shoshone.

The men that we now know as the Mountain Men began to arrive in the early 1820's. Andrew Henry had been on the early Astorian expedition and had come across the continental divide. He became a partner with William Ashley and became the field general for the early expeditions of the company. He and Jedediah Smith spent the 1823 winter with the Crows on the eastern side of the Wind River Mountains.

Ashley & Henry were having a very tough time making their fur company successful. They had established Fort Henry on the Missouri River at the mouth of the Yellowstone River, but they had few furs to show for all of the effort. They were in the midst of Blackfeet country, who with the help of the British, had fostered a serious hatred for the arriving Americans. The attempt to resupply the fort was a near disaster as one supply boat sunk and the replacement expedition had a costly battle with the Arikaras Indians in what is today South Dakota.

Andrew Henry had enough and resigned in 1824 leaving William Ashley to run both ends of the business. Initially, Ashley was to remain in St. Louis and run the resupply and fur trading business, while Henry ran the expeditions. With Henry gone, Ashley led the expedition over South Pass.

The Crow Indians had told both Henry and Jedediah Smith about the beaver-rich Green River valley, plus, the Indians in the area did not trap beaver so there would be no conflict there. William Ashley then headed out in the spring of 1824 and headed for South Pass. Once at the Pass, the expedition followed the Big Sandy until it ran into the Green River.

Ashley made an astute business decision and split his men into four groups and made plans for a rendezvous on July 1, 1825 near where Henry's Fork intersects the Green River. At this first rendezvous, Ashley sold the supplies and bought the furs that he would take back to St. Louis. He left his men in the mountains and he headed back over South Pass with the furs.

Once back in St. Louis, Ashley sold the furs and prepared for the next supply expedition the next year. The men left behind to work and live in the mountains, Jim Bridger, Jed Smith, Tom Fitzpatrick and William Sublette were some of those that would become famous as the Mountain Men.

The annual rendezvous was the planned event where the men would be resupplied and their furs purchased. The men came down out of the mountains, the supply expeditions would arrive and the Indians would assemble to participate in the trading, the celebration and the general raucous party that the gathering would become.

  These men were young, some in their teens and the oldest being 25. They worked alone many times in mountains that presented their own dangers, including the constant threat of grizzly bear attack, mountain lions and the general danger that living alone in the wilderness brings.

The men that did not show up at rendezvous were assumed to be dead. Sometimes men showed up displaying the results of a run-in with a grizzly...an arm missing, a shredded shoulder, part of a face missing. And once they arrived at rendezvous, the danger did not disappear. Several references are made by those that attended the rendezvous about attacks in the middle of night by rabid wolves while the men slept.

It was a tough life and the rendezvous provided the event where these men would come together and swap stories of the year behind them, test their skills against others, brawl, drink, sell their furs and buy their supplies for the coming year.

The men arrived and with them, they brought their horses. Dr. Fred Gowans, resident historian at the Museum of the Mountain Men said that, on average, there were 7 people in an Indian lodge and for those 7 people there would be approximately 13 horses. So, while there were possibly up to an estimated 5,000 people at the largest rendezvous, there may have been more than 10,000 horses.

Therefore, horses played a large role in the lives of the Indians, the Mountain Men, and the supply expeditions that crossed the Rockies once a year to supply the Mountain Men and to carry their furs back to St. Louis.

This trail started by Ashley and then modified by the later supply missions formed the route by which the west was settled. This mass migration that would begin in St. Louis would be funneled through South Pass as the people crossed the Rocky Mountains. But, before there was this migration, there were the Mountain Men blazing the trails.

A rendezvous was a gathering of friends...and enemies. Competing companies began to show up at the rendezvous. This competition was serious as the men would kill each other in the mountains in incidents related to warring fur companies and then be friends during rendezvous.

While the popular image of a mountain men depicted them entirely in buckskin, this may be inaccurate. Their attire was likely a combination of the clothe shirts that they purchased from 'back-east' and buckskins that they or their Indian wife made through the year.

There was no whiskey at the first rendezvous. At later rendezvous, it was free flowing.

The Indian and American cultures met at the rendezvous. Often, the Mountain Men married Indian women. The women were hard workers and assisted the Mountain Men in many ways in their attempt to live in the remoteness of the mountains.

At the rendezvous, each Mountain Man wanted to impress the gathering with the beauty of his wife. Sometimes, they would spend most of their earnings on adornments, beads or other items that the supply wagons would bring in from the east.
9, 2000.

The streets of the small southwestern Wyoming town of Pinedale come to life once a year with characters and images from a time gone past, but that is still living in tthe event is held annually on the second weekend in July.

Near the Green River and with the Wind River Mountains in the background, the location has been a favorite meeting spot for almost 175 years. Six of the 14 rendezvous were held close to where the current Pinedale is located. A favorite parting expression of the Mountain Man when in the mountains was, "I'll see you on the Green!" Once a year, the legends from the past are brought back to life in Pinedale.