As early as the first decade of the present century, the great fur companies sent out expeditions up the valley of the Platte in the charge of their agents, to trap the beaver and other animals valuable for their beautiful skins.  The hardships of these pioneers in the beginning of a trade which in a short time assumed gigantic proportions are a story of suffering and privation which has few parallels in the history of the development of our mid-continent region.  Until the establishment of the several trading-posts, the lives of these men were continuous struggles for existence, as no company could possibly transport provisions sufficient to last beyond the most remote settlements, and the men were compelled to depend entirely upon their rifles for a supply of food.  When posts were located at convenient distances from each other in the desolate country where their vocation was carried on, the chances of the trapper for regular meals every day were materially enhanced.  Before the establishment of these rendezvous, where everything necessary for his comfort was kept, the trapper subsisted on deer, bear-meat, buffalo, and wild turkeys —­the latter were found in abundance everywhere.  In times of great scarcity, he was frequently compelled to resort to dead horses.  His coffee, and perhaps a scant supply of flour which he had brought from the last settlement, would rarely suffice until he reached the foot of the mountains; and even when obtainable the price was so exorbitant that but few of the early adventurers could indulge in such luxuries.

The first trading-post was established at the mouth of Clear Creek, in 1832, by Louis Vasquez, and named Fort Vasquez, after its proprietor, but never grew into much importance and was soon abandoned.

Fort Laramie, one of the most celebrated rendezvous of the trappers, was erected in 1834, by William Sublette and Robert Campbell of St. Louis, agents of the American Fur Company.  It was first called Fort William, in honour of Sublette; later Fort John, and finally christened Fort Laramie, after the river which took its name from Joseph Laramie, a French-Canadian trapper of the earliest fur-hunting period, who was murdered by the Indians near the mouth of the river.  It was located in the immediate region of the Ogallalla and Brule bands of the great Sioux nation, and not very remote from that of the Cheyennes and Arapahoes.

In 1835 the fort was sold to Milton Sublette, Jim Bridger, and others of the American Fur Company, and the year following was by them rebuilt at a cost of ten thousand dollars.  It remained a private establishment until 1849, the year of the discovery of gold in California, when the government bought and transformed it into a military post, to awe the savages who infested the trail to the Pacific, which had then become the great highway of the immense exodus from the Eastern states to the gold regions of that coast.

The original structure was built in the usual style of all Indian trading-stations of that day, of adobes, or sun-dried bricks.  It was enclosed by walls twenty feet high and four feet thick, encompassing an area two hundred and fifty feet long by two hundred wide.  At the diagonal northwest and southwest corners, adobe bastions were erected, commanding every approach to the place.