Fort Bonneville site, on Horse Creek near its junction with Green River. Photo by Author

Section of “Map of the Rocky Mountains” by Washington Hood, Corps of Topographical Engineers, 1839. Data by William Sublette and others. Records of the War Department, National Archives.
[High-resolution Map]

Trapper type—American.

BULLET MOLD

VII. “The Fire Hole”: Era of the American Fur Company, 1833-1840

By 1832 only fragments of the Yellowstone Park area had apparently been explored, notably the Lake region. According to Warren A. Ferris, one of the great geyser basins was visited in the spring hunt of 1833 by a party of forty men under a Spaniard named Alvaris (or Alvarez). They reached the area by going up Henry’s Fork, later returning to Green River for the rendezvous. This is the first concrete evidence of white men in the Firehole Basin. The discoverer may have been Manuel Alvarez, United States consul at Santa Fe from 1839 to 1846, who figures prominently in Josiah Gregg’s journal.

The rendezvous of 1833 was held at Bonneville’s fort on Horse Creek, tributary of Green River, near Daniel, Wyoming. The St. Louis supply caravan of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, led by Robert Campbell, included young Charles Larpenteur, who wrote in his journal of a side trip through Jackson’s Hole: