oregon trail

Built in 1850 along the North Platte River in Goshen County, Ash Point was a modest one-room post that briefly traded horses before burning in 1852. Its later owners went on to establish a well-known post at Fort Laramie.

Seth Ward and William Guerrier built Sand Point Post at Register Cliff, the first stop west of Fort Laramie, where they pioneered livestock exchange and open-range wintering that launched Wyoming’s cattle industry. It operated for sixteen years, doubling as mail and Pony Express station.

Henry Gilbert and William Garrish built a trading post at the ninth and last crossing of the Sweetwater River in 1858, a Lander Cutoff’s stopover marked by a road-builder’s murder, a Pony Express run, and a military garrison before it became known as Burnt Ranch.

Less than three years after French painter Louis Daguerre shared with the world how to make pictures on polished sheets of silver-plated copper, Lt. John C. Fremont attempted to photograph the land we think of as Wyoming. The early photographers of Wyoming adapted new technology to rough terrain and unforgiving elements.

From 1850 to 1854, fur trader and interpreter Joseph Bissonette ran an independent trading post on the North Platte River, serving emigrants and Lakota bands alike. He later worked as a ferryman, bridge partner, and government official through the Oregon Trail’s final violent years.

In 1852, Charles Lajeunesse built a trading post at Devil’s Gate, funneling all Sweetwater Valley emigrant traffic past his door. Abandoned by 1856, its ruins sheltered the stranded Martin Handcart Company that winter. Lost for a century, the site was rediscovered and rebuilt in 2001.

In 1857, veteran fur trader Andrew Drips built a post on the North Platte River near present-day Torrington, his last venture after decades in the Rocky Mountain and Upper Missouri trade, including stints helping run Fort William and two different posts both called Fort John. Drips traded here until his death in 1860.

Fort Adams was a short-lived trading post established in September 1841 near the confluence of the Laramie and North Platte rivers in present-day Goshen County, Wyoming. Built by the trading firm of Sybille, Adams, and Company and occupied for only a single season, it was one of several posts competing simultaneously for the North Platte trade in the early 1840s.

Fort Bernard undercut Fort John’s prices by up to 40% in 1845–46, until a fire destroyed it within two years. Visited by Francis Parkman and the Donner Party, it captures a fierce, short-lived challenge to the American Fur Company’s monopoly on the North Platte.

For twelve years, John Baptiste Richard’s toll bridge and trading post near present-day Evansville was the upper North Platte’s busiest crossing, hosting emigrants, soldiers, and the Pony Express. Known to travelers as “Reshaw’s Bridge,” it gave way to Fort Caspar in 1865.