Coming Soon - A Visit to Fort Laramie - Again

Seems like my blogging has slowed significantly since the weather started to cooperate with my summer activities.

Summer means getting more time out with my camera

      Speaking of summer activities, I see that next Saturday, June 17, is one of my favorite summer events, Fur Trade Day at Fort Laramie. Over the years I have spent much time in the study of the Mountain Man era and loved teaching that part of the growing west in my history classes. Fur Trade Day is one event that really fits my interest. Over the past few years, we have made them all and found the reenactors to be knowledgeable, friendly and willing to answer any and all questions. In case any readers are thinking about going it takes place from 9:30 – 5:00 on that day. (Saturday, June 17)

My wife trying out a trapper recliner

I am the not so Mountain Man-ish one at Fur Trae Day last year

    Must be my preparation because I am presently re-reading, Donald Clayton Porter’s classic novel, Fort Laramie. I read this one so many years ago that it reads like a new story to me.

    Because both of my western mysteries and several of my short stories include Fort Laramie, we visit four or five times each year, depending on visitors to our house, it can sometimes be more. 
Click anywhere on the above sentence for the link to my books.

The Ruts south of Guernsey Wyoming

    We enjoy living only 13 miles from the Fort and less than a mile from the most famous ruts of the Oregon Trail. Life is good when it is summer in Wyoming.

For Your Enjoument - Fort Laramie Trivia 
 Answers under the last photo

1.    What two rivers come together near Fort Laramie?

2.    Which well known and now well-preserved building at the fort served as Officer Quarters and as the Post Headquarters?

3.    Where did Fort Laramie get its unique to Wyoming name?

On the grounds of Fort Laramie - July 4, 2016

Answers

1.    North Platte and Laramie

2.    Old Bedlam – May now be the oldest building in Wyoming

3.    Jacques La Ramie sometimes spelled Ramee - I prefer Ramie

Fort Laramie and Fur Trade Days

From 1820 to the early 1840s the fur trade was king in the mountain west. Furs were money in the west and money brought men searching for it. It was a wild, exciting and dangerous life. A chance for riches and a chance to never come back.

Last weekend was the annual, Fur Trade Day’s, at Fort Laramie. Several reenactor’s with some wonderful displays and great knowledge of the trapping era took part. I fear this period of time in American History is being washed away with newer history.

The great days of the fur trade lasted but two decades and a few years. Changing fashions and Gold in the west ended the Mountain Man era – too early for me. 

Fort Laramie, Fur Trade Days and the CCC

Anyone who follows my posts, and this is number 601, from all of my blogs, knows that I have two great interests in American history. They are the opening of the American west and the Civilian Conservation Corps of the 1930s. Today I would like to make a mention of both.

First my book on the CCC, The Civilian Conservation Corps and the Building of Guernsey State Park, should be available next week. When I started this book I thought it would take six months. That was more than I wanted, but I felt it would be worth it. Well, next month will be month 23 of the six I planned. Yes, it was a bit harder than I expected. I will put a link up as soon as it goes live. If nothing else you can download the free sample.

Second, I have already marked my calendar for June, 20 at Fort Laramie. That weekend, June 21 is Father’s Day, and the annual, “Fur Trade Days.”

This features a nice trapper’s camp and talks and demonstrations by reenactors. Here are a few photos from last years, Fur Trade Days. Can’t wait!

Fort Laramie and the Plains Indian Culture

Until 1834 Americas vast buffalo plains were wild and untouched by eastern society and business. All that changed when William Sublette built the small, Fort William, on the Laramie and Platte Rivers of today’s Wyoming. Society and eastern business came west and stationed itself behind the 18 foot high stacked earth and cottonwood walls of the fort the trappers already called Laramie.

Much of the fur trade in America’s northwest and south were already controlled by far removed big business and now the great free trappers and traders of the plains and Rocky Mountains had eastern business in their midst.

White men had hunted and trapped this area for two decades, living, dressing, eating and hunting like their nomad brothers of the plains. Many married into the tribes, happy with the roaming freedom of the plains Indians.

Over the Laramie River from the Fort

With the building of Fort Laramie came a separation of cultures. The walls of the fort kept the Indians out and let the white men in. When allowed inside, Indians were treated more like intruders than guests, a most opposite approach from the tribes who had welcomed whites into their world a few years earlier.

Trapper and Trader at Fort Laramie

In the year 1834 and the west was going through a huge change, a change that would bring bloodshed to the plains for more than a half century. The east had come west.