Rocky Mountain Fur Company
| Private | |
| Industry | Fur trade |
| Fate | Dissolved |
| Successor | None |
| Founded | St. Louis, Missouri, U.S. (1822) |
| Founder | William Henry Ashley, Andrew Henry |
| Defunct | 1834 |
| Headquarters | St. Louis, Missouri |
|
Area served
|
United States and Territories |
The Rocky Mountain Fur Company, originally known as Ashley's Hundred, was organized in St. Louis, Missouri in 1822 by William Henry Ashley and Andrew Henry. Among the original employees were Jim Bridger, Hugh Glass, and Jedediah Smith; Smith went on to take a leading role in the company's operations.
The company became a pioneer in western exploration, most notably in the Green River Valley. The operations of other aspiring organizations like the American Fur Company would often overlap, causing a fierce rivalry. Growing competition motivated the trappers to explore and head deeper into the wilderness. This led to greater knowledge of the topography and to great reductions in the beaver populations.
Eventually the intense competition for fewer and fewer beavers and the transient style of fur hats brought the Rocky Mountain Fur Company down. Nearly a decade after its founding, the stock holders sold all their shares, leaving behind a legacy in terms of both western settlement and folklore. The US government, seeking geographic knowledge or travel advice regarding the West, would seek out former members of the company as consultants. Ashley himself later became a congressman whose expertise was Western affairs.
In the early 1820s General William Ashley, of the Missouri militia, was looking to enter state politics but needed to raise funds to do so. Having barely survived a slew of past entrepreneurial and military pursuits, Ashley was looking at an insolvent future. To counteract his previous financial failures, he looked west to the fur trade.
Joining him as a partner was Major Andrew Henry, a long-time friend of Ashley's. Canvasing the local St. Louis area in 1822, they published an ad in the Missouri Republican (266 Chittenden). It targeted "One Hundred enterprising young men . . . to ascend the river Missouri to its source, there to be employed for one, two, or three years." The caliber of men sought by Ashley and Henry would serve as the prototypical "mountain man". The criteria for the position was simple enough – masculine, well-armed, and able to work (trap) for up to three years.
The ad attracted ample attention; roughly 150 men signed up. Among those hired were Jedediah Smith, the four Sublette brothers, including William and Milton, Jim Beckwourth, Hugh Glass, Thomas Fitzpatrick and David Edward Jackson, who in 1826, bought the Company and helped run it for the next seven years. Other mountain men who worked for the Company were Jim Bridger, Joseph Meek, Robert Newell, George W. Ebbert, and Kit Carson.
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