The West Old & New Vol. III Issue III March 2014 | Page 7

Mountain
Men
Of the
Old West
A mountain man was a trapper and explorer who lived in the wilderness. Mountain men were most common in the North
American Rocky Mountains from about 1810 through the 1880s. They were instrumental in opening up the various Emigrant
Trails allowing Americans in the east to settle the new territories of the far west by organized wagon trains traveling over roads
explored and in many cases, physically improved by the mountain men and the big fur companies originally to serve the mule train
based inland fur trade.
They arose in a natural geographic and economic expansion driven by the lucrative earnings available in the North American
fur trade, in the wake of the various 1806–07 published accounts of the Lewis and Clark expeditions' (1803–1806) findings about
the Rockies and the (ownership-disputed) Oregon Country where they flourished economically for over three decades. Two new
international treaties in early 1846 and early 1848 officially settled new western coastal territories on the United States and
spurred a large upsurge in migration largely ending the days of mountain men making a good living by fur trapping. This was partially because the fur industry was failing due Ѽ