north platte river

Joseph Bissonette relocated to LaBonte Creek in 1854, just weeks before the Grattan Fight ignited the First Sioux War. Raided twice and stripped of trade by military restrictions, his least successful post reveals how quickly the North Platte’s independent trading era collapsed.

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.

James Bordeaux built an independent trading post at Sarpy’s Point on the North Platte after the 1849 sale of Fort John. For two decades it served Lakota bands and Oregon Trail emigrants and stood near the outbreak of the 1854 Grattan Fight.

Louis Guinard, once a partner in John Richard’s North Platte bridge, built his own rival crossing six miles upstream in 1859, a venture that outlasted Guinard himself as owner, surviving as a Pony Express station, a Civil War-era military post, and finally Fort Caspar.

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.

Built in 1841 to challenge the American Fur Company, Lancaster Lupton’s Fort Platte sparked a fierce three-year rivalry with Fort John. Bankrupt by 1842, it passed through four owners before being abandoned in 1845. Not even an adobe brick remains today.

Built in 1841 to outshine its decaying predecessor Fort William, adobe Fort John became the busiest trading post on the North Platte, the “Fort Laramie” thousands of emigrants passed through. The Army bought it in 1849, launching one of the West’s great military posts.