goshen county

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.

In 1841, the obscure firm of Lock and Randolph built a log post near Fort Adams on the North Platte, the smallest player in a crowded market. Known mainly from a note about borrowed axes, the venture failed, followed by bankruptcy at Fort Vasquez.

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.

The Moncravie House was a small trading establishment constructed in 1856 on the Laramie River approximately twelve miles upstream from Fort Laramie, in what is now Goshen County, Wyoming.

After the Grattan Fight forced Platte River traders to Fort Laramie in 1855, Seth Ward and William Guerrier built a trading post just across the river. Ward became the fort’s sutler in 1857, anchoring one of the corridor’s most successful trading partnerships until 1863.

In 1862, veteran Fort Laramie trader James Bordeaux built a short-lived trading post at Rawhide Buttes. Almost nothing is known about the post itself, but the buttes remained a landmark for travelers long after Bordeaux left, later becoming a station on the stage road to the Black Hills gold rush.

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 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.