When Thomas Fitzpatrick told William Ashley
he had found South Pass, Ashley returned with him and divided his
bands of trappers into different groups and sent them off in
various directions from Green River with instructions to return to
the mouth of the Henry's Fork at the beginning of July, where he
would meet them with provisions for the following winter.
Most kept that date, and this would be the first of the famous
trappers' rendezvous held in the vicinity of the Green River until
the beaver trade fizzled out fifteen years later.
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On their return to Washington
in 1806, Lewis and Clark told their countrymen that there was so
much beaver in western waters that the supply was virtually
limitless and could never be exhausted. The 'beaver men' of
the various fur companies wiped out that limitless supply in less
than twenty years. That, and the popularity of oriental silk
among European haberdashers, brought the era of the mountain man to
a sudden end. Not coinincidentally, that bygone era gave way
to the era of the west bound settler and homesteader with nary a
pause.