They had to hunt for their food, build shelter, and repair their guns and traps. They had to mend and make their own clothes. They had to check their traps, prepare pelts daily, and haul the pelts out of the mountains.
The mountain men played a strategic role in settling the American West. The fur trade lured many individuals west and created large fortunes, as demonstrated in the American Fur Company of John Jacob Astor and the Rocky Mountain Fur Company of William Henry Ashley
The mountain men blazed the great westward trails through the Rockies and Sierra Nevada Mountains and stirred the popular imagination with stories of redwood forests, geysers, and fertile valleys in California, Oregon, and other areas west of the Rocky Mountains.
