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Barton Barbour

Dr. Barton H. Barbour teaches early North American and U.S. History at Boise State University and has published a number of books and articles about fur traders, Indians, and the U.S. government. His 2001 book, Fort Union and the Upper Missouri Fur Trade, was a finalist for the Western Writers of America Spur Award for historical non-fiction. His recent biography, Jedediah Smith: No Ordinary Mountain Man, was published in April 2009 by the University of Oklahoma Press. Barbour is currently working on a book treating the fur trade era at Fort Laramie National Historic Site.

Author's Entries

  • Ewing Young (c. 1796–1841)

    Ewing Young was a Santa Fe trader, a Rocky Mountain man, a California livestock trader, and one of the first Americans to permanently live in Oregon. The need to settle his estate after his death in 1841 led directly to the creation of Oregon’s first Provisional Government, five years …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Fur Trade in Oregon Country

    The fur trade was the earliest and longest-enduring economic enterprise that colonizers, imperialists, and nationalists pursued in North America. It significantly shaped North American history, especially from 1790 until 1840, when the trade played a dramatic and critical role in the Oregon Country, which included present-day Oregon and Washington and …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Jedediah Strong Smith (1799-1831)

    Jedediah Strong Smith was one of the first and, arguably, the most important of the American trappers and explorers who penetrated the interior Oregon Country in the 1820s. Prior to his arrival in 1826, almost no American trappers had scoured Oregon, and none produced maps to rival the significance of …

    Oregon Encyclopedia

  • Joseph L. Meek (1810–1875)

    Joseph L. Meek, a mountain man, storyteller, and public personality, played a significant role in bringing Oregon into the United States in 1846–1848. A politician and a legislator in territorial Oregon, he helped ensure that Oregon became a free state in 1859, on the eve of the Civil War. Meek …

    Oregon Encyclopedia