richard burton

Fur trader Joseph Bissonette built a bustling trading post at the mouth of Deer Creek in 1857—a crossroads of commerce, diplomacy and scandal that hosted Lutheran missionaries, Pony Express riders and a wary military garrison before Indian wars reduced it to ashes in 1865.

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.

French-Canadian trader Louis Guinard built a bridge and trading post below Independence Rock in 1857, hoping to profit from Utah Expedition traffic, only to abandon it two years later for a bigger, and ultimately more dangerous, venture on the North Platte.