American Explorers/Fur Trappers
Daguerreotype showing a California fur trapper, ca. 1860; courtesy the Bancroft Library, U.C. Berkeley
Beginning in the 1820s California attracted a small but increasing number of American explorers and fur trappers. Most of them had set out west from midwestern frontier cities such as St. Louis, Missouri and Council Bluffs, Iowa. All of these men seem to have been driven by something other than the hope of personal wealth.
Professional explorers such as John C. Fremont joined military-sponsored trips to chart and map the region. Men like Jedediah Strong Smith and Joe Walker set out to trap beaver and other small animals for their pelts. Often called "mountain men," these explorers played an important role in mapping the West and, ultimately, in clearing the way and blazing the trails for the settlement of the western frontier in the years ahead.