Rendezvous

Before the Oregon Trail, before the cattle drives, before Wild Bill Hickok and Wyatt Earp, fur trappers—mountain men—opened the West. In their heyday they numbered but a few hundred, yet these intrepid frontiersmen penetrated a land known only to the Indians and within 20 years paved the way for all who would follow. The economic engine that drew men such as Jedediah Smith and Jim Clyman was the beaver, with its fine, barbed underhair that hatters pressed into felt and then molded into ha