Lewis & Clark began their historic expedition from near St. Louis May 21, 1804 and returned to St. Loius on Sept. 23, 1806. They used the Missouri and Yellowstone Rivers much the same way that Ashley and his men would in later years.

Ashley moved to St. Louis around 1808 and became a Brigadier General in the Missouri Militia during the War of 1812. Before the war, he operated a gunpowder factory after discovering a cave in Texas County, Missouri that was a source of saltpeter, a vital ingredient of gunpowder. His future partner, Andrew Henry owned a factory that produced bullets. This is how the two earned their first fortunes.

After the war, Ashley became a merchant and performed some surveying. Ashley was then elected as Missouri's first Lieutenant Governor in 1820 and served until 1824.

I call Ashley 'the reluctant adventurer'. According to Don Berry, in his book, A Majority of Scoundrels, he states that Ashley's first love and focus was politics (served as a U.S. Representative for the Jacksonian party between 1831 to 1837) and he wanted to become the governor of the state. But, then as now, politics requires money, so Ashley turned to the fur business as a source of revenue to support his run for the governorship.

In 1822, William Ashley & Andrew Henry began posting the now famous ads seeking the 100 enterprising young men to ascend the Missouri River to its source. Ashley was the businessman behind the operations while Henry was the field commander. Henry had knowledge of the fur business and had been to the Snake River area in 1811.

Berry describes Ashley as being a cautious and an ambitious man. He was in his mid forties at this time, and becoming known as a great adventurer would probably be considered ludicrous by Ashley. He picked good men to do the job, but when those he had hired were unable to do the job or when, as Henry did, retired from the business, he went into the field and personally led the expeditions. As a result of these explorations, he made his place in history and helped open the lands west of the Rockies to the new country of the United States.

The prize for these trapping expeditions was the beaver, Castor Canadensis, which had a glossy underfur that had a natural tendency to mat , or "felt" and was waterproof. For those reasons, it was used in many different styles of hats of the period. Each pelt was worth $6 - $8. Unfortunately, for the beaver, their fur was the one commodity that served as the primary source of trade that could justify the expense of exploration and settlement of the new lands in the west.

Don Berry states that Ashley was basically bankrupt when he started his bid for the governorship and was in debt to the tune of $100,000. A lot of money now and especially a lot of money in the early 1800's. But due to the respect that he had garnered in the community and the good credit that he had established, he found backers that were willing to put up the money to support these expeditions into the Rockies.

Ashley was not the first to cross the Rockies or to set up a fur business, but much like Henry Ford, who was not the first to build automobiles, but one who revolutionized the production of automobiles, so did Ashley who revolutionized the fur business, helped foster the famous Mountain Men of the West, and was instumental in opening the west to the Americans.

At the time Ashley and Henry went into the Rockies, the lands to the west and southward were under Spanish control and those lands in the northwest were under British control. Thanks to the efforts of Ashley and his men, they helped to open these lands for settlement for Americans so that today, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah are part of the U.S. and not Mexico and Oregon, Washington and Idaho are not part of Canada.

After reaching the Yellowstone and delivering his supplies and men, Ashley immediately returned to St. Louis to start building the supply expedition for the men now stationed at Fort Henry. Jedediah Smith and a small group of men accompanied Ashley downriver.

In 1823, Ashley made another expedition up the Missouri. At the Arikara Villages near today's Pierre, South Dakota, the expedition ran into trouble.

In my research, it appears that Ashley generally had good relations with the Indians, with the exception of the Arikaras. The evidence points to the fact that he tried to trade with the Indians, if given a chance, and relied upon them for information, horses and food. In fact, Ashley and his men in the other expeditions often camped with or near Indian villages. Ashley seemed most impressed with the Shoshone. He did have trouble with the Crows, though, when they stole some of his horses.

Ashley went up alongside the Missouri River, then up the Platte River and finally the South Platte River until it reached the Front Range of the Rockies. At this point, he headed in a northwesterly direction until he reached the wide and sandy pass that is now known as South Pass in southwestern Wyoming. This pass at 7,000 ft. remained snow free longer than the mountains on either side.

The Rocky Moutains presented a major detriment to western settlement. Much of Ashley's route from St. Louis and through South Pass later became the Oregon Trail which led to the California Trail. The tracks left by the wagon that Ashley had on the expedition were later used by the first wagon trains as they made their way across the country in a migration that saw hundreds of thousands of settlers move west. The Pony Express came through South Pass in 1860 as well as the Mormons that settled Utah earlier in 1847.

All of this trailblazing was being accomplished by the ambitous, but reluctant adventurer, William Ashley. Lewis and Clark had crossed the Rockies, but they made their crossing farther north near where Yellowstone is located and much too far north to be considered a viable route for the settlers.

Today, the area in northeastern Utah is named Ashley National Forest. Ashley Valley is a town in the area and has its own web site.

Source: Story of the Great American West. - Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader's Digest Association, c1977.

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The Rendezvous

Ashley is famous for creating the Rendezvous system in 1825 where the trappers, merchants and Indians would meet once a year at a predetermined spot to trade. The trappers traded their pelts for supplies in these annual events. Ashley retired in 1826 after making a fortune by revolutionizing the fur business by starting the Rendezvous. They were held each year from 1825-1840 at various sites near where Utah, Wyoming and Idaho meet.

The Rendezvous was a raucous event where supplies were brought in from St. Louis on very large supply expeditions, whiskey was flowing and men that had been in the mountains for a year of solitary work were ready to mix pleasure with business. Importantly, the rendezvous sustained the fur trade which was very important in opening the American west.