HISTORIC MARKER
Atense confrontation between members of the British Hudson’s Bay Company and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company trappers, and a company of French-Canadian trappers occurred near the Weber River in Mountain Green in May of 1825. The geopolitical implications of the clash, as well as native-trapper relations, extended to the area later pioneered as Kay’s Ward because the boundaries of this settlement extended to the Weber River on the north. The river’s bed was a natural route for travel by native peoples, trappers, pioneers and, by 1869, the railroad.
Nearly sixty members of the British Hudson’s Bay Company under well-known trader Peter Skene Ogden, approximately two dozen American Rocky Mountain Fur Company trappers led by Johson Gardner, and a neutral company of fifteen men trapping with the French-Canadian Etienne Provost gathered at the site. Ogden’s brigade was intensively trapping beavers along the Bear and Weber rivers to create a “fur desert” in order to discourage American territorial interest in the region, and it had amassed a sizeable fortune in furs estimated at $75,000 or more. Gardner and his competing American trappers, who were on their way to the annual rendezvous in Green River, Wyoming, believed Ogden and the British were trespassing on United States sovereign soil and provocatively set up their camp less than 100 yards away and hoisted the American flag.
After a heated stand-off, Gardner’s contingent not only unceremoniously relieved Ogden and his men of their fur fortune, but also convinced several of Ogden’s crew to defect. While the financial details of this dispute remain hazy – did Gardner raid Ogden’s fur cache and steal it or did Ogden sell out “for a mere song” to settle his own significant debts – the outcome was clear. Ogden, fearful of further losses in men and furs, retreated northward. Ironically, neither Ogden nor Garner could legally claim Mountain Green for their country. By treaty, it belonged to Mexico.
Sources
- The painting, Encounter at Mountain Green created by Gary E. Smith and commissioned for the nation’s bicentennial, is owned by the Weber State Storytelling Festival and shown by permission.
