Author Description

Nathaniel Wyeth spent three long years establishing Fort Hall, in present-day Idaho, and Fort William, in modern Oregon. That time had been marked by illness, deaths, failed business plans and violence, but had also given Wyeth insights into the frontier that few others could claim. This closing volume of The Western Expeditions of Nathaniel J. Wyeth examines the New Englander's 1834-1836 trip to the Ham's Fork Rendezvous and subsequent explorations along the Columbia River and its tributaries. Enriched by a trove of journals and letters written by Wyeth, Hudson's Bay Company officials, naturalists Thomas Nuttall and John K. Townsend, and a host of others, as well as rarely-seen business documents, this work brings greater understanding to the role Nathaniel Wyeth and Fort Hall played in the opening of the American West to settlement and commerce.