In this book, Barton Barbour presents the first comprehensive history of Fort Union, the nineteenth century's most important and longest-lived Upper Missouri Ri

It also influenced American interactions with Great Britain, whose powerful Hudson's Bay Company competed for Upper Missouri furs."--BOOK JACKET.

John Jacob Astor's dream of empire took shape as the American Fur Company. At Astor's retirement in 1834, this corporate monopoly reached westward from a depot