Fort Bonneville

What Bonneville meant by the fort is clearer from the terms of his leave than from the pickets. The Army let him go from 1831 until October 1833, at his own expense, on condition that he map the country and report on the political and military disposition of the tribes he met; his New York backing came through Alfred Seton, a veteran of Astor's Astoria. Back east in 1835 he met Washington Irving at Astor's house and sold him his notes and maps for $1,000. They became The Adventures of Captain Bonneville in 1837.

What the plaque says

Fort Bonneville In May of 1832, Captain Benjamin Bonneville left Fort Osage, Missouri with an expedition consisting of one hundred and ten men and twenty wagons, headed for the Rocky Mountain West. Upon his arrival in the Green River Valley, he ordered immediate construction of a fort along the west bank of the River. Some uncertainty surrounds Bonneville's intent, but historians believe it was to use the fort as a trading establishment and military outpost to demonstrate to the British that Americans were in the west to stay. Dubbed "Fort Nonsense" and "Bonneville's Folly" because of its poor location, the fort was soon abandoned as the severity of long Wyoming winters became apparent. However, the fort commanded a strategic location in the heart of the Rocky Mountain Trapping System. In 1833 it was the center of trading activity for the annual rendezvous and for storage for the 1836 Rendezvous. The fort was fabricated of cottonwood pickets a foot or more in diameter and about fifteen feet in length. The perimeter was approximately eighty feet square, with blockhouses diagonally opposite each other. It had at least one internal structure which housed a forge that was used extensively during the fort's occupation. In 1989, an archeological survey was conducted at the site as one of Wyoming's Centennial celebration projects. The effort produced evidence of a well defined "living surface", and discovery of the external walls. The fort's forge area was investigated, showing active and extensive blacksmithing. Numerous early 1800s artifacts were unearthed, revealing much about Fort Bonneville's archeological significance as well as its historic contribution to events of the Fur Trade Era. These artifacts are on exhibit and interpreted at the Museum of the Mountain Man in Pinedale, Wyoming. Completed in September 1832, Fort Bonneville was one of the first permanent structures built by whites in Wyoming. The location and the archeological remains are a listed National Historic Place.

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Museum of the Mountain Man — 14 mi
  Six fur-trade rendezvous met near here on the Green; the only artist who ever saw one, Alfred Jacob Miller, came in 1837.

More markers nearby

• Narcissa Prentiss Whitman and Eliza Hart Spalding — 3.8 mi
• Green River Rendezvous — 3.8 mi
• Pinckney W. Sublette — 5.0 mi
• First Holy Mass in Wyoming — 5.0 mi