Timeline

Surrounding the Rendezvous Era 1825-1840


Map from Washington Irving's "The Rocky Mountains, or Scenes, Incidents, and Adventures in the Far West", Volume 1 (1837)

1804    Lewis and Clark leave St. Louis for the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean
1806    Lewis and Clark return to St. Louis from their cross-continent exploration, bearing news of the abundant fur resources in the Rocky Mountains.
1810    Alfred Jacob Miller is born in Baltimore, Maryland.
1811    First documented Euro-Americans enter present-day Sublette County, Wyoming.
1812    Robert Stuart becomes the first Euro-American to cross South Pass.
1822    Henry-Ashley Fur Company with Jim Bridger, Thomas Fitzpatrick and Jedediah Smith establish a trading post at the mouth of the Yellowstone River.
1824    Jedediah Smith uses South Pass.
First rendezvous held in the Rocky Mountains.
1825    First rendezvous held at Henry's Fork of the Green River.
1830    Start of the Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Company.
1832    Capt. Benjamin L.E. Bonneville establises Fort Bonneville just west of present-day Pinedale, Wyoming.
Capt. William Drummond Stewart sails to America.
1833    First of the six Green River Rendezvous.
Alfred Jacob Miller studies art in France and Italy.
William Drummond Stewart travels west to his first rendezvous.
1836    First white women, Narcissa Whitman Prentiss and Eliza Hart Spalding, cross South Pass with their missionary husbands.
Alfred Jacob Miller opens a studio and gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana.
1837    Alfred Jacob Miller accompanies his patron, William Drummond Stewart, to the Green River Rendezvous. AJM returns with approximately 100 pen-and-ink sketches and watercolors of the people, places and events of the trip.
Financial panic in the east affects the fur trade, and the business of the rendezvous begins to move into forts.
1838    William Drummond Stewart attends his last rendezvous.
1839    Alfred Jacob Miller exhibits oils at the Apollo Gallery, New York.
1840    Last rendezvous held on the Green River.
Alfred Jacob Miller sails for Murthly Castle, Perthshire, Scotland to begin a two-year commission for Sir William Drummond Stewart.
1842    William Drummond Stewart visits the Green River Valley for the last time.
1843    Emigrants begin regular use of the Oregon Trail.
1846    William Drummond Stewart publishes semiautobiographical, Altowan.
1871    Following his death, William Drummond Stewart's art collection and other possessions are sold at auction.
1874    Alfred Jacob Miller dies in Baltimore, Maryland.