CALENDAR YEAR COMPARISONS

INTO THE WOODS

CALENDAR YEAR COMPARISONS.

On a rainy day years ago we were taking evening classes at Regis University in Denver. The wife and myself spent many hours in the libraries around our home working on lessons. One class was a "communications class" you were video taped when standing in front of the class giving your speech. The tape was given to each student to study and try to eliminate all the weird things one does when nervous. I have never had a problem with speaking in front of a group, but the wife is a different story. At he library she studied for the next class while I screw around researching period foods for our business "Clark & Son Mercantile".

When in class it was like a "show & tell" that we did for the schools for me, had lots of material, she did something on animals?  At one outing at the library I started studying the years and dates of events and tried to match that information to today's calendar dates.

This would be from our forefathers to our days, months and current year to make a more meaningful experience. Plus it brought up some interesting comments and thoughts when sitting around a camp fire in the evening.



CALENDAR YEAR COMPARISONS

Using the comparisons we you reference our time frame we were involved with and events from journals, history, or any reliable source we could find to plan our upcoming event. Everyone really got into the program, we furnished a newsletter with what had happened on the week we would be on the ground (this helped the ones uncertain of what they were doing). We used this idea with encampment, trekking, canoeing, horseback trips, etc. in an attempt to get everyone doing their homework, it worked.

Example: John Jacob Astor had formed the Western Department of his American Fur Company to begin exploiting the fur trade in the western reaches of the continent. In 1828, Astor established a large trading post called Fort Union at the strategically important point where the Yellowstone River merged with the Missouri . Located near what would later be the Montana-North Dakota, Fort Union allowed Astor to dominate the fur trade of the northern plains and Rockies . Here's the year 1828.  

"Tue 22nd day of June 1833 trade was busier than had been anticipated per several of the post traders, being one of the best dates for the year".

For a time it seemed that the company had been destroyed, but following the war, the United States passed a law excluding foreign traders from operating on U.S. territory. This freed the American Fur Company from having to compete with the Canadian and British companies. The AFC competed fiercely among American companies to establish a monopoly in the Great Lakes region and the Midwest.

Ref: Chittenden, Hiram Martin (1902). The American Fur Trade of the Far West.

And I'm sure you know the rest of the story.... This was 2001, with this information we planned a canoe trip on the Upper Missouri for the following year 2002, going to Fort Union, arriving on (you guessed it) Tue 22nd day of June 1833 (in our minds). We clued the folks at the fort on the calendar, they loved the idea and they spread the word.

At your next outing give this some thought, you'll probably be like others that have and found it challenging to do as our forefathers.