The Fur Trade Gamble: North West Company on the Pacific Slope, 1800-1820

Before Hudson’s Bay Company domination, two companies attempted large-scale corporate trapping and vied to command Northwest fur trade. On one side were the North West Company’s Montreal entrepreneurs, and on the other, American John Jacob Astor and his Pacific Fur Company.

They were businessmen first and explorers second, and their era is a story of grand risk in both lives and capital—a global mercantile initiative in which controlling the mouth of the Columbia River and developing the Chi...